Where the streets have no name (online mapping services must rely on landmarks).
Indian business blog Trak.in reviews three mapping services’ coverage of the subcontinent. They look at Yahoo, RouteGuru and MapMyIndia. Creating roadmaps of India is challenging “given the unorganized and inconsistent naming standards of the Indian roads” or the lack of road names in the first place.
When asked to provide directions from point A to point B, Yahoo’s attention to detail in the face of nameless roads is, well, look at this direction cue: “Take 4th Left (past Hindustan Petroleum Petrol Pump on the right), go 0.2 km”.
Related: The Map Room yesterday mentioned the difficulty of mapping Visalia, California’s ever-changing street suffixes; as the city grows, maps have trouble keeping up with streets that go from rural “roads” to urban “boulevards” over time.
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Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh
Le Corbusier said of the city, “Chandigarh is planned to human scale. It puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with places and buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach.” In the middle of the last century, Le Corbusier’s lofty plans for urban design were (nearly) realized in Chandigarh, India [map, wiki, flickr, official].
Photograph by d ha rm e sh.