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I love their use of the word legible. A good street naming system makes the city “legible”.

I’m in a suburb of Charleston, SC and it’s so weird how I have no idea how far things are….1 mile? 3 miles? I miss riding my bike on that Portland grid and following the numbers all the way to zero and hitting the Willamette.

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It’s a geographic legibility, but you could also say that “C. Chavez ave” provides a historical legibility or an ability to see what the city values.

In Melbourne the North-South street go: King, William, Queen, Elizabeth, Swanston, Russell. It communicates the commonwealth history and founding history of the city. Cute, but decidedly less useful and memorable than number avenues.

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