6 ms·

Italian streets that don't exist on any map (2022)

108 points by fanf2 2y ago

AlbertCory 2y ago
Also, of course, the Old City of Jerusalem, which I couldn't get out of without asking someone. (Although I'm sure an HNer will tell me now that it's actually easy, if you just do x, y, and z. Of course, you can also ask someone, which is easier.)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- LatticeAnimal 2y ago
  It seems like you’re talking about the online maps of Jerusalem and how they don’t match the real world. That isn’t what the article is about (despite its title)
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    oh, pardon me. One pedantipoint for you.
    - LatticeAnimal 2y ago
      One of the things I appreciate about HN is the depth of discussion. I think part of that depth comes from the assumption that everyone who is commenting has read the article. I wasn’t trying to be pedantic (even though I certainly was) I was just trying to grapple with this ideal
      - siva7 2y ago
        > I think part of that depth comes from the assumption that everyone who is commenting has read the article. The depth actually comes from the higher than average intelligence in this community. I can assure most don't read the article
        AlbertCory 2y ago
        I did get the gist. That doesn't require reading to the end.
balderdash 2y ago
I thought these were going to be hidden streets rather than fictitious streets used for administrative purposes
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dejj 2y ago
Related: phantom settlement/copyright trap that became real https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York
karaterobot 2y ago
> “Local authorities know that if someone asks to be registered on a fictitious street, it’s almost always going to be a person who needs social help,” explains Minardi. “They’re worried that this person will be an excessive burden on the town budget.” > As soon as someone asks an Italian town to be registered on a via fittizia, that town is legally obliged to create one... I assumed the purpose of this workaround was to provide accurate population numbers to the national government, who would then provide funding for services based on how many people actually needed them. If that's true, I don't see the advantage to the city in blocking homeless or itinerant people from registering. If that's false—for example, if no money trickles down to the city level based on population—then why legally require cities to create these fictional streets in the first place? It may be a requirement without corresponding support. That's certainly a possibility. But it's confusing to me without clarification. It's easy to speculate, but I'd love an authoritative answer.
- situationista 2y ago
  The services in question are provided by the local municipality - and they don’t receive extra government funding for this. So unlike a regular citizen who registers on a real street, from whom the city typically collects taxes, a homeless citizen brings costs without bringing many “benefits” (from a purely economic perspective). As for why they mandate the creation of these fictitious streets, it’s because Italy’s administrative system is obsessed with linking people to an address in a way that is absolutely alien to many foreigners. When you change address the police literally come round to check you actually live there…
  - pulisse 2y ago
    Italy's not unique in that respect, in Europe at least. You can't do much in Germany without a Meldebescheingung.
    - immibis 2y ago
      But in Germany you need an actual address. If you are homeless, you almost legally don't exist. You are prohibited from opening a bank account, for example, or having a job, because you do not exist.
LorenPechtel 2y ago
It actually sounds like a good idea, although I think each person on the fictitious street should get a separate address number.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Exactly and a unique extended postcode based on a hash of the address number, for easier routing and error detection/correction.
skrtskrt 2y ago
Italian bureaucracy is the 8th wonder of the modern world
- m2f2 2y ago
  True Here at least no one sues the government over free tax filing though...
- bonzini 2y ago
  We have both the best and the worst examples of bureaucracy. We were even the first country to have "registered email", in 2005. It's a set of server side protocols based on SMTP and MIME, that provide a legally-binding confirmation that the email was received by the recipient's server and delivered to the recipient. The cool part is that there are even RFCs describing the protocol. Since then it's been extended and has become a European standard.
  - sph 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_email https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_email
  - avereveard 2y ago
    You can also do almost every common procedure online using one of many authentication providers and there are many third parties providing auth services. Compared to say cl@ve in Spain, which only works on a handful sites and for few operations beyond visualization, or Ireland where you have to leg it to the right office, Italy is like living in the future. As long as your data is correct in the system. Italians like to complain a lot but I think it's because few experienced the actual pain of living abroad
    - bonzini 2y ago
      Yeah, it's easy to downplay it but a single sign on (not government-provided, only government-standardized) to do everything from tax returns to downloading your medical record is not at all a given in many other countries. Hoping that they don't mess it up.
mormegil 2y ago
In the Czech Republic, homeless people get the address of the municipal office as their official address of residence.
- jeroen 2y ago
  It should work the same in The Netherlands, but when my city had semi-technical problems with registering me at my new address, they weren't exactly forthcoming with this option.
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    Sounds a lot like they gave you some BS to conceal discrimination.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Cool. Sometimes nonprofits like churches do the same in the US. Small businesses tend to use their home address (for tax reasons) or the address of a membership-based office space vendor like Regus (pre-coworking and pre-WeWork). In the US, it's possible for anyone to receive a few pieces of mail or packages at a post office without a permanent physical address using general delivery.[0] For people without means who receive significant mail, the local USPS postmaster can grant them a PO Box.[1] As of 2018, there were 1.3 million no-fee PO Boxes out of 21.3 million.[2] (I assume this is for very low income people and actual homeless people and combined with some tens of thousands of deceased homeless people and perhaps as many cheaters of means taking advantage of the system.) And to workaround the artificial discrimination against PO Boxes for all users, USPS offers Post Office Box Street Addresses (PBSA).[3] 0. https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-General-Delivery https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-General-Delivery 1. https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Is-there-mail-service-for-the-homeless https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Is-there-mail-service-for-the... 2. https://www.uspsoig.gov/reports/audit-reports/no-fee-post-office-boxes https://www.uspsoig.gov/reports/audit-reports/no-fee-post-of... 3. https://postalpro.usps.com/PBSA https://postalpro.usps.com/PBSA
  - pigscantfly 2y ago
digitalsushi 2y ago
map makers put fake streets on their maps to catch people stealing their data. often a cul de sac because people won't use that as a throughway.
- DANmode 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
ruszki 2y ago
I’m in Italy since beginning of May. If only these vie fittizies would be the only problem with maps in Italy, it would be fine. Apple Maps’s navigation is unusable. It directed me several times to streets which barely existed, while there were perfectly fine paved roads 100 meters from there. I stopped using it on day one. Waze barely knows anything about constructions. This was quite painful in the mountains, where I had to go back a lot and find a different road. This is especially problematic in the south where traffic signs lie all the time. Google Maps always tries to take me to main roads asap, while there are way better small roads, and it also had problems with completely normal addresses. OpenStreetMap lacks a lot of paths in San Marino, and Sicily. None of them knows speed limits, random guess is as good as their “knowledge”, and this is without construction works, and there are many of them. Of course, below Naples, speed limits mean different things than for example in Austria, and the random traffic signs show it :) Also ZTL is universally ignored, and they tried to take me through them several times, when there was no good reason.
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  I'm from Tuscany and I kinda enjoy discovering new street with maps when it tells you the shortest roads and not the most used ones. However, in Sicily it's hell on hearth, getting out of Comiso, a small town, was very, very hard
  - ruszki 2y ago
    I also really liked to use smaller roads, they are fun. Which app do you think is the best for this?
    - amarcheschi 2y ago
      I don't know, whenever I go with my road bike somewhere I've never been to I just use Google maps to plan for the path, and if I get lost somewhere but I roughly know where I have to go I'll just go on and not check maps for a few minutes. By car I just follow the suggested path that maps calculates, aside from the highways you're almost guaranteed to get a scenic view in the countryside in Tuscany. Just select the option to avoid toll roads
Syzygies 2y ago
I used to navigate Italy as a tourist using the three green volumes of the Carta stradale d’Italia (1:200,000), whose detail included passages that could barely be driven by a rental car. There are since map series at 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 [1]. I found this post title "Italian streets that don't exist on any map" misleading, given my experiences there. The article describes fictitious streets. [1] https://geospatial.com/resources/country-data/italy/ https://geospatial.com/resources/country-data/italy/
TurkishPoptart 2y ago
I don't think homeless people should have rights.

108 points by fanf2 2y ago

Also, of course, the Old City of Jerusalem, which I couldn't get out of without asking someone. (Although I'm sure an HNer will tell me now that it's actually easy, if you just do x, y, and z. Of course, you can also ask someone, which is easier.)

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
LatticeAnimal 2y ago
It seems like you’re talking about the online maps of Jerusalem and how they don’t match the real world. That isn’t what the article is about (despite its title)
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  oh, pardon me. One pedantipoint for you.
  - LatticeAnimal 2y ago
    One of the things I appreciate about HN is the depth of discussion. I think part of that depth comes from the assumption that everyone who is commenting has read the article. I wasn’t trying to be pedantic (even though I certainly was) I was just trying to grapple with this ideal
    - siva7 2y ago
      > I think part of that depth comes from the assumption that everyone who is commenting has read the article. The depth actually comes from the higher than average intelligence in this community. I can assure most don't read the article
      - AlbertCory 2y ago
        I did get the gist. That doesn't require reading to the end.

balderdash 2y ago

I thought these were going to be hidden streets rather than fictitious streets used for administrative purposes

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dejj 2y ago

Related: phantom settlement/copyright trap that became real https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York

karaterobot 2y ago

> “Local authorities know that if someone asks to be registered on a fictitious street, it’s almost always going to be a person who needs social help,” explains Minardi. “They’re worried that this person will be an excessive burden on the town budget.” > As soon as someone asks an Italian town to be registered on a via fittizia, that town is legally obliged to create one... I assumed the purpose of this workaround was to provide accurate population numbers to the national government, who would then provide funding for services based on how many people actually needed them. If that's true, I don't see the advantage to the city in blocking homeless or itinerant people from registering. If that's false—for example, if no money trickles down to the city level based on population—then why legally require cities to create these fictional streets in the first place? It may be a requirement without corresponding support. That's certainly a possibility. But it's confusing to me without clarification. It's easy to speculate, but I'd love an authoritative answer.

situationista 2y ago
The services in question are provided by the local municipality - and they don’t receive extra government funding for this. So unlike a regular citizen who registers on a real street, from whom the city typically collects taxes, a homeless citizen brings costs without bringing many “benefits” (from a purely economic perspective). As for why they mandate the creation of these fictitious streets, it’s because Italy’s administrative system is obsessed with linking people to an address in a way that is absolutely alien to many foreigners. When you change address the police literally come round to check you actually live there…
- pulisse 2y ago
  Italy's not unique in that respect, in Europe at least. You can't do much in Germany without a Meldebescheingung.
  - immibis 2y ago
    But in Germany you need an actual address. If you are homeless, you almost legally don't exist. You are prohibited from opening a bank account, for example, or having a job, because you do not exist.

LorenPechtel 2y ago

It actually sounds like a good idea, although I think each person on the fictitious street should get a separate address number.

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Exactly and a unique extended postcode based on a hash of the address number, for easier routing and error detection/correction.

skrtskrt 2y ago

Italian bureaucracy is the 8th wonder of the modern world

m2f2 2y ago
True Here at least no one sues the government over free tax filing though...
bonzini 2y ago
We have both the best and the worst examples of bureaucracy. We were even the first country to have "registered email", in 2005. It's a set of server side protocols based on SMTP and MIME, that provide a legally-binding confirmation that the email was received by the recipient's server and delivered to the recipient. The cool part is that there are even RFCs describing the protocol. Since then it's been extended and has become a European standard.
- sph 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_email https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_email
- avereveard 2y ago
  You can also do almost every common procedure online using one of many authentication providers and there are many third parties providing auth services. Compared to say cl@ve in Spain, which only works on a handful sites and for few operations beyond visualization, or Ireland where you have to leg it to the right office, Italy is like living in the future. As long as your data is correct in the system. Italians like to complain a lot but I think it's because few experienced the actual pain of living abroad
  - bonzini 2y ago
    Yeah, it's easy to downplay it but a single sign on (not government-provided, only government-standardized) to do everything from tax returns to downloading your medical record is not at all a given in many other countries. Hoping that they don't mess it up.

mormegil 2y ago

In the Czech Republic, homeless people get the address of the municipal office as their official address of residence.

jeroen 2y ago
It should work the same in The Netherlands, but when my city had semi-technical problems with registering me at my new address, they weren't exactly forthcoming with this option.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Sounds a lot like they gave you some BS to conceal discrimination.
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Cool. Sometimes nonprofits like churches do the same in the US. Small businesses tend to use their home address (for tax reasons) or the address of a membership-based office space vendor like Regus (pre-coworking and pre-WeWork). In the US, it's possible for anyone to receive a few pieces of mail or packages at a post office without a permanent physical address using general delivery.[0] For people without means who receive significant mail, the local USPS postmaster can grant them a PO Box.[1] As of 2018, there were 1.3 million no-fee PO Boxes out of 21.3 million.[2] (I assume this is for very low income people and actual homeless people and combined with some tens of thousands of deceased homeless people and perhaps as many cheaters of means taking advantage of the system.) And to workaround the artificial discrimination against PO Boxes for all users, USPS offers Post Office Box Street Addresses (PBSA).[3] 0. https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-General-Delivery https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-General-Delivery 1. https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Is-there-mail-service-for-the-homeless https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Is-there-mail-service-for-the... 2. https://www.uspsoig.gov/reports/audit-reports/no-fee-post-office-boxes https://www.uspsoig.gov/reports/audit-reports/no-fee-post-of... 3. https://postalpro.usps.com/PBSA https://postalpro.usps.com/PBSA
- pigscantfly 2y ago

digitalsushi 2y ago

map makers put fake streets on their maps to catch people stealing their data. often a cul de sac because people won't use that as a throughway.

DANmode 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street

ruszki 2y ago

I’m in Italy since beginning of May. If only these vie fittizies would be the only problem with maps in Italy, it would be fine. Apple Maps’s navigation is unusable. It directed me several times to streets which barely existed, while there were perfectly fine paved roads 100 meters from there. I stopped using it on day one. Waze barely knows anything about constructions. This was quite painful in the mountains, where I had to go back a lot and find a different road. This is especially problematic in the south where traffic signs lie all the time. Google Maps always tries to take me to main roads asap, while there are way better small roads, and it also had problems with completely normal addresses. OpenStreetMap lacks a lot of paths in San Marino, and Sicily. None of them knows speed limits, random guess is as good as their “knowledge”, and this is without construction works, and there are many of them. Of course, below Naples, speed limits mean different things than for example in Austria, and the random traffic signs show it :) Also ZTL is universally ignored, and they tried to take me through them several times, when there was no good reason.

amarcheschi 2y ago
I'm from Tuscany and I kinda enjoy discovering new street with maps when it tells you the shortest roads and not the most used ones. However, in Sicily it's hell on hearth, getting out of Comiso, a small town, was very, very hard
- ruszki 2y ago
  I also really liked to use smaller roads, they are fun. Which app do you think is the best for this?
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
    I don't know, whenever I go with my road bike somewhere I've never been to I just use Google maps to plan for the path, and if I get lost somewhere but I roughly know where I have to go I'll just go on and not check maps for a few minutes. By car I just follow the suggested path that maps calculates, aside from the highways you're almost guaranteed to get a scenic view in the countryside in Tuscany. Just select the option to avoid toll roads

Syzygies 2y ago

I used to navigate Italy as a tourist using the three green volumes of the Carta stradale d’Italia (1:200,000), whose detail included passages that could barely be driven by a rental car. There are since map series at 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 [1]. I found this post title "Italian streets that don't exist on any map" misleading, given my experiences there. The article describes fictitious streets. [1] https://geospatial.com/resources/country-data/italy/ https://geospatial.com/resources/country-data/italy/

TurkishPoptart 2y ago

I don't think homeless people should have rights.