It was designed by horses and feet, then paved by an incompetent road works crew, with excessive police details… after being studied for 15 years by engineers, modified by legislature, fought against by the residents, and subject to the permitting process. 
Then they stuck up some one way signs, which I’m sure somewhere, gets you to a point that you can’t go up any street, nor go backwards.
the land was surveyed using compass directions (and getting errors that go with the conversion from 2D maps to a 3D globe). boundaries were often on this grid unless defined by a land or water feature. areas that were unsettled at the time of survey have more rectangular boundaries (the western USA states, counties and townships are more rectangular).
this might hold true for other countries that could be surveyed easier before settlement.
with the gender tendency for males to be able to use compass directions better than females then maybe Americans are just more manly.
there is the claim that males are better with directions and maps, females are better with landmarks for navigation.
i’ve heard the claim that this might be due to back in the cave and tree dwelling times that males would hunt at distances of many miles and into unfamiliar territory and so need that abstract thought to navigate and plan hunting strategies. females that were more restricted to the home tree or cave foraged for food in the close area and had to repeatedly find it visually.
i do find abstract thought a great help in understanding science, math and technical areas. i don’t find that i’m as visually observant as females i know.
individuals of both genders have talents, skills and abilities in all areas but there could be some tendencies. these tendencies and culture have influenced each other. a person is what they are so these tendencies if true don’t mean much to me.
Living on an Island helps.
With us, it’s totally reversed. I’m great with maps and directions, and my husband is great with landmarks. Last time we went to Mobile, I told him to turn left on Government Street: he said, “At that big brick church, right?” However, if I don’t have a map or directions, I get totally lost.
I am so directionally challenged, and this sounds like a great plan. I’ll try it. Thanks!
This whole “Go north” business is always, always, trotted out by people from plains/desert cities. You simply can’t do that in Pittsburgh, for example. Usually, it’s not possible to “go north” because the choices are E or S. Other times, you’ll have to go south to go north. On that map, you have to take McArdle to Arlington to get to Carson. Why? Because McArdle is on top of the mountain and Carson is at river-level.
There’s NO WAY you can keep track of where you’re facing or how far you’ve gone. Oh, you think it was a series of 90 degree turns? No sir, it was a series of 80 degree turns. You’re now lost. My mother just expressed her confusion over this neighborhood, to which all her children agreed. We’ve lived next to there for decades and we still can’t figure it out.
Compounding this with the fact that even in April, the sun is still quite a ways south. So if it’s 10 am, the sun isn’t in the east. It’s somewhere in the southeast. Is it more south than east or more east than south? I don’t know, I left my almanac at home.
So while I’m sure it’s easy as pie in San Antonio, have mercy on the rest of us. Geez, next you’ll want us to give directions in miles instead of minutes.
Thanks, I had a feeling this has been a ‘long term’ problem. It is an old city. I remember once asking the guy in the next car how to get to 95 N? He says, follow me. I followed him and he brings me into the projects and takes off like a bat out of hell. I locked the doors and just kept driving until I hit a main avenue. I can get to where I’m going but leaving it’s hard to find signage!
If the sun is out and it’s either close to sunrise or close to sunset and it’s not overcast? Yeah.
Otherwise, heck no.
I’m one of those people who can walk into a building, locate the elevator, and get off on the umpteenth floor and have ZERO IDEA whether at that point I’m facing the street I came in from, have it behind me, or have it to my right or left.
I don’t mean some of the time, I mean I can work there for 4 years and still not know unless I make an effort to find out.
No it sure as hell doesn’t. Not if you don’t live at the freaking equator it doesn’t.
It rises from the east at an oblique angle that changes with the season. By midmorning it’s partway up the sky, but the place it rose from is not the bit of horizon that’s closest (directly below) the sun’s current location.
So if it’s around 10:30 AM, just seeing where the sun is doesn’t tell you which direction EAST is. You can probably rule out some directions but you end up with a rather broad swath of sky that represents where east might be. A swatch of sky that could be as much as 45° if, like me, you aren’t good at gauging how far up the freaking sky it actually is.
This. I have a terrible sense of direction. If I know the cardinal direction of SOMETHING, I’m damn proud of myself. (For instance, I know that the street I work on is on an east-west plane.) Otherwise, I’m clueless.
That happened to me coming out of a subway stop shortly after I first moved to Toronto. Most of the stops bring you out on a main street, so you can surmise you’re on Big Street then figure out which way you need to go based on the sun in the sky. Often you can also find the CN Tower somewhere on the horizon.
Somehow, I came out on some dinky, little side street. Overcast, CN Tower blocked by nearby buildings—I had no freakin’ clue which direction was what.