Address (geography)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
An address is a code and abstract concept expressing the fixed location of a home, business or other building on the earth's surface.
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Functions
Addresses have several functions:
- Providing a means of physically locating a building, especially in a city where there are many buildings and streets,
- Identifying buildings as the end points of a postal system,
- A social function: someone's address can have a profound effect on their social standing,
- As parameters in statistics collection, especially in census-taking or the insurance industry.
History
Until the advent of modern postal systems, most houses and buildings were not numbered. Streets may have been named for landmarks, such as a city gate or market, or for the professions of their inhabitants. In many cities in Asia, most minor streets were never named. This is still the case today in much of Japan. When postal systems were introduced, it became necessary to number buildings to aid in mail delivery.
Current addressing schemes
In most English-speaking countries the standard has become an alternating numbering scheme progressing in one direction up a street, with odd numbers running up one side and even numbers up the other, although there is significant variation on this basic pattern. Cities in North America, particularly those planned on a grid plan, often incorporate block numbers (explained below), quadrants and cardinal directions into their street numbers, so that in many such cities, addresses roughly follow the Cartesian coordinate system. Detroit and its suburbs have long addresses. Japanese cities usually number buildings by block and neighbourhood (chome) rather than street; as a result most Japanese streets are unnamed.
When building numbers were assigned in Florence, Italy, residential addresses were assigned blue or black numbers, while commercial addresses were assigned red numbers (written with a "/r" after the number). The two numbering sequences are independent; thus, 40/r is not necessarily anywhere near 40.
Block numbers
Block numbers are a system of assigning numbers based on distance rather than strictly sequentially. Typically, each block is assigned 100 numbers, such that the building numbers on that block vary only in the two least significant digits. For example, in Washington, D.C., the block of 7th Street, N.W., between D and E streets, N.W., is designated as the 400 block, meaning that building numbers on that block are in the range from 400 to 499 inclusive. It is common to indicate block numbers on street signs; for instance, the article on Pennsylvania Avenue shows a street sign indicating what is probably the most famous block number in the world.
Some localities in the Midwest have a more elaborate system of block numbering. Such localities use compound block numbers to indicate the number of blocks from both the north-south and the east-west dividing lines. For example, an address might be of the form "N112 W16709 Such-and-such Street" rather than "16709 W. Such-and-such Street."
Street-naming conventions
Street names may follow a variety of themes. In new developments, streets may all follow the same theme (e.g. bird species), or start with the same letter. Streets in Europe and Latin America are often named for auspicious dates. In many North American cities, such as Manhattan and Edmonton, Alberta, streets are simply numbered sequentially across the street grid. Washington, D.C., uses a system of numbered north-south streets combined with lettered and alphabetically named east-west streets; diagonal avenues are typically named after states.
Postal codes
Postal codes are a relatively recent development in addressing, designed to speed the sorting and processing of mail by assigning unique numeric or alphanumeric codes to each geographical locality.
Postal alternatives to physical addresses
For privacy and other purposes, postal services have made it possible to receive mail without revealing one's physical address or even having a fixed physical address. Examples are post office boxes and general delivery.
See Also
External Links
- Frank's compulsive guide to postal addresses (http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/postal.html)nl:Adres (woonplaats)
