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Comment by agentCR | Hacker News Reader

Costa Rican here. The article doesn't come close explaining the complexity (and inconvenience) of addresses in Costa Rica. We even use landmarks which no longer exist (e.g. from the old pharmacy in X, take a left), or use any distinctive surrounding object for official guidance (trees, fences, wall color).

Landmark usage for directions is greatly due to poor city planning throughout the last century and the address culture grown around it. Most city streets do have names/numbers, but are pretty much unknown to the common citizen. Waze and its contributors have done a truly amazing job. I believe OSM has lagged behind Waze because Waze was the first GPS nav system that actually worked in the country, and was therefore so greatly welcomed.

P.D. Nokia maps also worked decently, but GPS-capable nokia phones were scarce in the market.

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Nokia's map data lives on as "HERE" https://www.here.com/?map=9.9258,-84.0787,8,normal

In the US, there were some pretty significant efforts to standardize road names and house numbering (this largely happened at the county level). One of the big reasons was to improve fire response, which was largely accomplished by pushing the system in the direction of being logical (so roads in a county will often be numbered sequentially and the like).

Are there agencies in Costa Rica that would push such a standardization, or if the existing names and numbers are already reasonable, push the use of them?

My understanding in the US is that a lot of the naming rationalization was done as part of the E911 location-aware service. This included giving numbers to properties that either didn't have them or at least didn't commonly use them (like summer cottages). It also involved, for example, giving segments of roads different names if they weren't connected or if they had multiple branches. It also largely rationalized cases where roads had different names in the USPS database and on local maps. (My house effectively had two different addresses when I moved in and I always needed to make sure local service people knew where was house was; on more than one occasion I was accused of giving someone the "wrong" address for my house.)

This largely happened before the widespread consumer use of GPS, but it certainly helped when GPS rolled out.

I guess E911 caused some further effort.

My grandfather died in 1994, and one of the things in his garage was an old road sign that had names, rather than the numbers that are in use today (he had been township clerk, I guess he quit that some years before).

Searching a bit finds lots of projects that were done ~1950 or earlier (often in the context of making it easier for new residents to find their way around).

I think the use of road names will depend a lot on the local governments (called municipalidades). Many streets don't have signage labeling them with their names. Much recently (a few years ago), the Municipalidad de San José started putting street name signage, bus route signage, etc.. So I think we will eventually get there somewhere in the future. Regarding postal codes, Correos de Costa Rica already publishes codes at the Distrito level (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_codes_in_Costa_Rica)

Plus, Waze is helping also. Every time I use it, I can hear a street's name.

I have quite literally used "Left at the spot where there is usually a cow grazing next to a bus stop" to tell people to find my house.

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