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Comment by abdullahkhalids | Hacker News Reader

That's correct. In Pakistan, typically cities are broken up into housing societies. Each society is broken up into sectors/blocks, which are typically indexed by the alphabet(A, B, C, ...), but occasionally, one will see block M7 or sector B2 etc. In each such sector, each house has a unique numbered address.

Some larger societies are first broken up into "phases" and then into sectors/blocks.

Street numbers are typically not required in an address, but are often provided as helpful guidance.

Not a great system, but still better than Calgary's system (where I studied), which might be the worst system I have ever seen. You can't navigate at all without a map.

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I have to disagree.

In Calgary, the streets are numbered and it's super easy to navigate between "16th St NW" and "18th St NW". Certainly easier to understand than "Go from St. Catherine's Street to Peel" in Montreal.

Where they are not numbered, they at least have the name of the community. Edgemont, for example, has no numbered streets but the name usually starts with "Edge", making it clear what part of the city you are going to.

I don't think it is perfect but I have also lived in Tokyo where the system is literally impossible without a GPS because the locations are not as neatly arranged as here.

> I don't think it is perfect but I have also lived in Tokyo where the system is literally impossible without a GPS because the locations are not as neatly arranged as here.

Even GPS and being a native speaker of Japanese isn't enough to successfully navigate somewhere in Japan sometimes often enough that it's super common for businesses to include detailed access instructions on how to get to their business.

The amount of times I've seen my wife not even be able to read a place name here makes me wonder why they don't just do something slightly more sensible. A recent funny one was when city hall sent her some mail advertising some seminar and she couldn't read the name of the train station on the pamphlet, so she called city hall and enquired about it and the person she talked to couldn't read it either.

Two questions:

- What is a 'society'? Is it like a community that pays for upkeep and has other advantages or just a name for an area?

- Do tell about Calgary!

As in a "gated society"/"gated community"

Thanks. Sorry for the belated reply.

A society is a business entity. They have some control over all houses in an area. Most societies are large. Hundreds or thousands of houses/buildings.

The administration of the society is usually done by the original developers. They decide how big the plots of land are, decide the rules houses must follow in their design. The houses themselves are built by the owners of the plots.

They society collects monthly fees typically. It is usually responsible for trash pickup. Richer societies will arrange water supply and even backup electricity plants. Larger societies create commercial areas and parks within their bounds as well.

They are not always gated as the parent states. Only the ones rich enough to hire security.

Thanks for the insights and apologies for the late reply. So it's somewhat similar to a development in the US - developer buys the land. But in this case, its the homeowner paying for and building the house vs the developer (like in the US).

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