[OSM-talk] Without an address, an Icelandic tourist drew this map of the intended location (Búðardalur) and surroundings on the envelope. The postal service delivered!

[Oleksiy Muzalyev]

On 31/08/16 10:03, Maarten Deen wrote:
>
> How did people manage before the age of smartphones, accurate GPS and 
> free maps?
>
> Regards,
> Maarten
Felix Dellatre, a German who lives in Managua, told in his presentation 
"Community mapping in Nicaragua" at the OSM US conference in San 
Francisco in 2013, that people do not come after dark because of the 
risk of being lost. They cannot go to the cinema, theater, courses, etc.

He also said that the absence of address system makes it impossible to 
call police or ambulance, and as a result local informal "authorities" 
emerge which try to establish a semblance of an order. He told that 
addresses are given is such a way as: "make four hundred steps to the 
north from the place of a burnt church, and ask Miguel".

Please, note than both Nicaragua and especially Brasil are relatively 
well-to-do countries with stable central authorities. You may look at 
the maps of the cities of many other countries and see that a lot of 
areas do not have street names at all and will never have them. The 
current system of street names and house numbers is not scalable, and it 
is not suitable for the whole world. The same as say, excuse me, a flush 
toilet system, which is common in Europe and North America, and yet it 
is absolutely not applicable for many other places. You may see this 
excellent BBC documentary "The Toilet An unspoken History" about it: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZHm3vkavgM .

I am sorry for this a bit too strong example, but it illustrates well 
that not all things to which we are accustomed are applicable elsewhere, 
especially in a places with scarce resources.