Italian streets that don't exist on any map (2022) | Hacker News Reader

Italian streets that don't exist on any map (2022)

atlasobscura.com

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> “Local authorities know that if someone asks to be registered on a fictitious street, it’s almost always going to be a person who needs social help,” explains Minardi. “They’re worried that this person will be an excessive burden on the town budget.”

> As soon as someone asks an Italian town to be registered on a via fittizia, that town is legally obliged to create one...

I assumed the purpose of this workaround was to provide accurate population numbers to the national government, who would then provide funding for services based on how many people actually needed them.

If that's true, I don't see the advantage to the city in blocking homeless or itinerant people from registering.

If that's false—for example, if no money trickles down to the city level based on population—then why legally require cities to create these fictional streets in the first place?

It may be a requirement without corresponding support. That's certainly a possibility. But it's confusing to me without clarification. It's easy to speculate, but I'd love an authoritative answer.

The services in question are provided by the local municipality - and they don’t receive extra government funding for this. So unlike a regular citizen who registers on a real street, from whom the city typically collects taxes, a homeless citizen brings costs without bringing many “benefits” (from a purely economic perspective).

As for why they mandate the creation of these fictitious streets, it’s because Italy’s administrative system is obsessed with linking people to an address in a way that is absolutely alien to many foreigners. When you change address the police literally come round to check you actually live there…

Italy's not unique in that respect, in Europe at least. You can't do much in Germany without a Meldebescheingung.

But in Germany you need an actual address. If you are homeless, you almost legally don't exist. You are prohibited from opening a bank account, for example, or having a job, because you do not exist.

You’re wrong, you have a legal right to a bank account (Basiskonto) if you live in the EU, even if you don’t have a fixed address. The bank literally can’t deny you ( https://www.bafin.de/DE/Verbraucher/Bank/Produkte/Basiskonto... ). You need to give them an address to send mail to, but that can be any address where you can get access to the mail (friends, family, homeless shelter…). Do you have a source for the claim?

in Hungary you also can't do anything with a lakcimkartya (=~ address card). The only difference with Italy is that it's a separate document from the ID card.

I thought these were going to be hidden streets rather than fictitious streets used for administrative purposes

I’m in Italy since beginning of May. If only these vie fittizies would be the only problem with maps in Italy, it would be fine. Apple Maps’s navigation is unusable. It directed me several times to streets which barely existed, while there were perfectly fine paved roads 100 meters from there. I stopped using it on day one. Waze barely knows anything about constructions. This was quite painful in the mountains, where I had to go back a lot and find a different road. This is especially problematic in the south where traffic signs lie all the time. Google Maps always tries to take me to main roads asap, while there are way better small roads, and it also had problems with completely normal addresses. OpenStreetMap lacks a lot of paths in San Marino, and Sicily. None of them knows speed limits, random guess is as good as their “knowledge”, and this is without construction works, and there are many of them. Of course, below Naples, speed limits mean different things than for example in Austria, and the random traffic signs show it :) Also ZTL is universally ignored, and they tried to take me through them several times, when there was no good reason.

You complain about one app using small roads and in the same breath complain about another app using large roads.

Traveling to other countries and expecting to be digitally informed about the world around you is a recipe for disaster.

Complaining about not being informed exactly about speed limits is a level of entitlement not easily attainable.

I’m glad you’re getting out and exploring the world. The real world lessons you are learning now are survival tools that you didn’t realize you needed.

I'm from Tuscany and I kinda enjoy discovering new street with maps when it tells you the shortest roads and not the most used ones. However, in Sicily it's hell on hearth, getting out of Comiso, a small town, was very, very hard

I also really liked to use smaller roads, they are fun. Which app do you think is the best for this?

I don't know, whenever I go with my road bike somewhere I've never been to I just use Google maps to plan for the path, and if I get lost somewhere but I roughly know where I have to go I'll just go on and not check maps for a few minutes. By car I just follow the suggested path that maps calculates, aside from the highways you're almost guaranteed to get a scenic view in the countryside in Tuscany. Just select the option to avoid toll roads

In the Czech Republic, homeless people get the address of the municipal office as their official address of residence.

Cool. Sometimes nonprofits like churches do the same in the US. Small businesses tend to use their home address (for tax reasons) or the address of a membership-based office space vendor like Regus (pre-coworking and pre-WeWork).

In the US, it's possible for anyone to receive a few pieces of mail or packages at a post office without a permanent physical address using general delivery.[0] For people without means who receive significant mail, the local USPS postmaster can grant them a PO Box.[1] As of 2018, there were 1.3 million no-fee PO Boxes out of 21.3 million.[2] (I assume this is for very low income people and actual homeless people and combined with some tens of thousands of deceased homeless people and perhaps as many cheaters of means taking advantage of the system.) And to workaround the artificial discrimination against PO Boxes for all users, USPS offers Post Office Box Street Addresses (PBSA).[3]

0. https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-General-Delivery

1. https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Is-there-mail-service-for-the...

2. https://www.uspsoig.gov/reports/audit-reports/no-fee-post-of...

3. https://postalpro.usps.com/PBSA

No-fee PO Boxes also cover situations in which USPS doesn't deliver to a house in a rural area (no carrier service, as noted in your source [2]). It's very common in many small towns.

The international term for general delivery is "poste restante" and some form of it is available most places.

It should work the same in The Netherlands, but when my city had semi-technical problems with registering me at my new address, they weren't exactly forthcoming with this option.

Sounds a lot like they gave you some BS to conceal discrimination.

I used to navigate Italy as a tourist using the three green volumes of the Carta stradale d’Italia (1:200,000), whose detail included passages that could barely be driven by a rental car. There are since map series at 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 [1].

I found this post title "Italian streets that don't exist on any map" misleading, given my experiences there. The article describes fictitious streets.

[1] https://geospatial.com/resources/country-data/italy/

Italian bureaucracy is the 8th wonder of the modern world

We have both the best and the worst examples of bureaucracy.

We were even the first country to have "registered email", in 2005. It's a set of server side protocols based on SMTP and MIME, that provide a legally-binding confirmation that the email was received by the recipient's server and delivered to the recipient. The cool part is that there are even RFCs describing the protocol. Since then it's been extended and has become a European standard.

You can also do almost every common procedure online using one of many authentication providers and there are many third parties providing auth services.

Compared to say cl@ve in Spain, which only works on a handful sites and for few operations beyond visualization, or Ireland where you have to leg it to the right office, Italy is like living in the future. As long as your data is correct in the system.

Italians like to complain a lot but I think it's because few experienced the actual pain of living abroad

Yeah, it's easy to downplay it but a single sign on (not government-provided, only government-standardized) to do everything from tax returns to downloading your medical record is not at all a given in many other countries. Hoping that they don't mess it up.

The system is incredibly hostile to foreigners though who need to interact with a government agency. Especially on holiday. I'm sure that goes well with all the ZTL signs posted 8 ft high and hidden behind the trees.

Why? It is only mandatory for companies and self-employed professionals. Most Italians don't have a registered email address.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_email

True

Here at least no one sues the government over free tax filing though...

Also, of course, the Old City of Jerusalem, which I couldn't get out of without asking someone.

(Although I'm sure an HNer will tell me now that it's actually easy, if you just do x, y, and z. Of course, you can also ask someone, which is easier.)

It seems like you’re talking about the online maps of Jerusalem and how they don’t match the real world.

That isn’t what the article is about (despite its title)

oh, pardon me. One pedantipoint for you.

One of the things I appreciate about HN is the depth of discussion. I think part of that depth comes from the assumption that everyone who is commenting has read the article.

I wasn’t trying to be pedantic (even though I certainly was) I was just trying to grapple with this ideal

> I think part of that depth comes from the assumption that everyone who is commenting has read the article.

The depth actually comes from the higher than average intelligence in this community. I can assure most don't read the article

I did get the gist. That doesn't require reading to the end.

It actually sounds like a good idea, although I think each person on the fictitious street should get a separate address number.

Exactly and a unique extended postcode based on a hash of the address number, for easier routing and error detection/correction.

Related: phantom settlement/copyright trap that became real https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York

map makers put fake streets on their maps to catch people stealing their data. often a cul de sac because people won't use that as a throughway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street

I don't think homeless people should have rights.

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