on the phone with B tonight, who is in Washington for the week, and we got to talking about city planning, the ways that major US cities conform (Chicago, DC) or refuse to conform (Boston) to a cartesian grid. generally, i’m a fan; when the numerical portion of an address corresponds to a physical distance it’s easier to know how far apart two locations are, how to navigate there, and so forth. but the discussion of gridded cities reminded me of one of my least favorite places: Salt Lake City. one of my chief objections* to Salt Lake is the way the city streets are laid out. instead of clarifying the street name’s position by assigning it a numerical position on the grid, they just skipped over the street name part and numbered all of the streets. So you can navigate to an address like 910 S 900 E. wait, what?** okay, so it’s a little confusing, but a few days and you get the hang of it. after which, navigating is a breeze. but tonight i finally figured out what bugs me so much about that. the city has no place names. think about what a deeply ingrained part of the cultural landscape place names are. there is an entire field of study (toponymy, thank you, wikipedia) built around the study place names. place names matter. how can you trust a city that refuses to name their streets? it’s like numbering your children or something.

it makes me love england even more, for all their crazy street names that change every third block, and the way that cottages in small villages still have their own individual names.

* okay, let’s be honest. another of my chief objections to Salt Lake is that it is the iconic center of the mormon faith. and having grown up as the only catholic kid in a mormon high school, i developed something of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to the subject of mormonism. yes, that was 15 years ago and i need to get over not having been popular. i get it. but still.

** okay, so Chicago DOES have a corner where North Avenue intersects Western Avenue. I’ll give you that one.