December 19, 2004Urban Planning......or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Right Angles. Which Atlanta doesn't have. Since leaving Virginia, I had forgotten what it was like to navigate streets laid over cowpaths and property lines defined by "that creek and this hill." As opposed to following a grid system like graph paper. Every surrounding town has signed onto the same system, so Alameda is 300 S even as you go outward past Aurora. Sometimes, the roads diverge a little. 100E is Lincoln, 200E is Sherman. Down in Englewood, they get a little further apart, leaving room for a street at 150E, which some town wit named "Lee." It also doesn't leave much room for individual cities and counties to honor their own. Route 123, as it leaves DC headed for Lorton, is called, by turns, Chain Bridge Road, Dolly Madison Blvd., Maple Ave., Ox Rd., and probably a couple of other names I've forgotten. So of course, everyone gives directions calling it "one twenty-three," and reverts to addresses at the destination. People in Denver generally give directions based on compass points, which requires you to carry a little mental compass around in your head. People in Atlanta give directions using "left" and "right." Following them is like driving-by-recipe. But it leaves you almost no way to reorient yourself when you inevitably miss the 3rd light or take the wrong turn, and go half a mile down the wrong fork where the road changes names even though you went straight, looking in vain for the brick wall you were told was right there on your left. This is why people need OnStar. Posted by joshuasharf at December 19, 2004 07:01 AM | TrackBack |
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