“The Corner of Avenue A and Twenty-Third Street”: Geographies of Street Numbering in the United States

Abstract

The designation of streets by number is one of the hallmarks of North American urbanism, yet very few studies have examined the geographies of street numbering in U.S. cities and towns. This article provides one of the first comprehensive, nationwide assessments of the spatial distribution of street numbering and lettering practices across the United States. Drawing on data collected from Google Maps, census records, state almanacs, and related sources, we analyze the proportion of incorporated places in all fifty U.S. states that have adopted some form of street numbering or lettering; the regional variation in the prevalence of alphanumerical systems of street designation and the relationships between the occurrence of street numbering, population size, and date of incorporation. In doing so, the broader aim of this study is to undertake the empirical groundwork needed to develop a more nuanced critical theory of the social production of calculable space.

用数字指派街道，是北美城市主义的里程碑之一，但鲜少有研究检视美国城镇的街道编号地理学。本文对全美以数字编号及字母编排街道的空间分佈，提供其中一个全面性、全国性的最初评估。我们运用搜集自谷歌地图、普查资料、各州年鑑，以及相关资源的数据，分析全美採取以数字编号或字母编排街道的某种形式的五十州之中，注册为治理单位的地方之比例；盛行以字母系统指派街道的区域变异，以及街道编号的出现、人口规模和地方注册日期之间的关联性。本研究这麽做的更广泛目的在于，为了对社会生产的可计算空间建立更细緻的批判理论，着手进行所需的经验性基础工作。

La designación de calles con números es uno de los distintivos del urbanismo norteamericano; no obstante, muy pocos estudios han examinado las geografías de la numeración de calles en las ciudades y pueblos de los EE.UU. Este artículo provee una de las primeras evaluaciones amplias de la distribución espacial de prácticas de numeración y diseño de placas para identificar las calles a través de los Estados Unidos. Con base en datos generados de los Mapas de Google, registros censales, almanaques del estado y fuentes relacionadas, analizamos la proporción de lugares incorporados en todos los cincuenta estados de los EE.UU. que han adoptado alguna forma de numeración o designación de calles; la variación regional en la prevalencia de sistemas alfanuméricos para la designación de calles; y las relaciones existentes entre la ocurrencia de la numeración de calles, el tamaño de la población y la fecha de incorporación. Haciendo esto, la meta mayor de este estudio es emprender el trabajo empírico de base que se necesita para desarrollar una teoría crítica más matizada sobre la producción social del espacio calculable.

Key Words:

• calculable space
• grid, spatial inscription, street numbering
• urban toponymy

关键词:

• 可计算的空间
• 网格
• 空间铭刻
• 街道编号
• 城市地名研究。

Palabras clave:

• espacio calculable
• cuadrícula
• inscripción espacial, numeración de calles
• toponimia urbana

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all of the research assistants and volunteers who helped collect data for this project, including Amanda Manning, Matt Brumley, Samuel Mullins, Benjamin Janik, and Nicholas Samuel at Texas A&M University, as well as Kerensa Mattison, Elliot Turnbull, Brittany Schina, Kayla Cheeke, Logan Richards, Alexandra Evers, and CindyAnn Rose-Redwood at the University of Victoria. The results presented in this article would not have been possible without their meticulous efforts. We would also like to acknowledge David Atkinson for his cartographic assistance, the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism, and the journal's editor, Barney Warf, for his patience throughout the revision process. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Digital Geohumanities Symposium at the University of Victoria in April 2013 and at the 2014 annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Los Angeles. We appreciate all of the feedback received at these events and are especially grateful to Jani Vuolteenaho for his encouragement over the years to complete this study of the geographies of street numbering in the United States.▪

Notes

1 Indeed, the Japanese city of Heian-kyō (now Kyoto) was laid out as a grid plan with numbered streets as early as the eighth century CE, based on the model of the Chinese imperial city, Chang'an (Shively and McCullough 2008). By contrast, street numbering did not likely appear in Europe until the thirteenth century CE (Vuolteenaho 2012). With respect to the presence of street numbering on every continent around the world, this claim was verified by conducting selective search queries using Google Maps.

2 Currently, Boston has various numbered streets scattered throughout the city, yet these street numbers are later additions that were not part of Boston's colonial street layout.

3 Yet, as Stewart ([1945] 1967) himself acknowledged, “[n]umbers and letters sometimes attain symbolic value, but less easily and often” (248). For a more recent discussion of the symbolic capital associated with numerical street naming, see Rose-Redwood (2008b).

4 For a compelling justification for the strategic use of quantitative methods to serve the ends of critical geography, see the two-part focus section on “Critical Quantitative Geographies” in The Professional Geographer (Kwan and Schwanen 2009; Schwanen and Kwan 2009).

5 The research team consisted of the current authors as well as several research assistants and volunteers. Because we began collecting data in 2007, our analyses are based on the list of incorporated places as recorded in the 2000 census (updated to 2006). The census data included numerous duplicate entries, and other miscellaneous information, which were deleted during the data collection process. As a result, there might be minor data entry errors that have slightly altered the estimate of how many incorporated places there are in the United States.

6 Because Stewart's estimates were made in 1945, we recalculated the proportion of places with numbered streets at that time, which comes to a total of 52.3 percent (9.9 percent for places with lettered streets). Therefore, he was indeed correct to maintain that, in 1945, more than half of all places in the United States had numbered streets.

7 For the purposes of this study, we have followed the U.S. State Department's (2008) classification of geographical “regions” for the sake of convenience. Of course, this should not imply that these regional designations have an ontological status that can be separated from the act of classification itself.

8 Using state almanacs, blue books, and related sources, we were able to compile incorporation dates for the vast majority of places in thirty-six of fifty states across the United States. Although not comprehensive, our sample includes a selection of states from all regions of the country.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Reuben Rose-Redwood

REUBEN ROSE-REDWOOD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, V8N 3L2, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests focus on the cultural politics of place making, critical spatial histories of the geocoded world, and the historical geographies of New York City.

Lisa Kadonaga

LISA KADONAGA is an independent scholar based in Victoria, BC, and Hamilton, ON, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests focus on global environmental change, historical biogeography, landscape perception, and sense of place in literature and popular culture.