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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren fog obamb Here. Have you ever wondered why the

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Speaker 1: road you live on may be called an avenue, a boulevard,

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Speaker 1: or a court instead of a plain old street? Was

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Speaker 1: it the whim of your neighborhood's developer or the town council?

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Speaker 1: Actually there are rules regarding road classifications, and while they're

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Speaker 1: not always followed, typically they are. The basic premise behind

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Speaker 1: road naming conventions, which are fairly consistent around the English

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Speaker 1: speaking world, is that the name bestowed upon a paved

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Speaker 1: or unpaved passage depends upon its size and function. A road,

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Speaker 1: for example, is a path that connects two points. Generally

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Speaker 1: roads head out of town or away from the heart

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Speaker 1: of a city. A street, in contrast, is a public

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Speaker 1: road with buildings on both sides. This means that a

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Speaker 1: street is also a road, but a road isn't necessarily

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Speaker 1: a street. Avenues generally run perpendicular streets, but also have

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Speaker 1: trees and buildings on both sides, and each municipality decides

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Speaker 1: in which direction to place its streets and avenues. In Manhattan,

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Speaker 1: for example, avenues run north and south, while streets run east,

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Speaker 1: and west. In Denver it's the opposite, and in Tucson

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Speaker 1: they got innovative calling the roads running diagonally to streets

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Speaker 1: and avenues stravenues a postal abbreviation S t R A.

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Speaker 1: So streets, avenues, and roads are the main names for

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Speaker 1: our passages, but here are some other common definitions. A

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Speaker 1: boulevard is a wide street with trees and other vegetation

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Speaker 1: on one or both sides, and often a median to

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Speaker 1: divide traffic. A court is a street ending in a

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Speaker 1: looper circle a k a. A coul de sac, while

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Speaker 1: a place is a rotor street with a dead end

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Speaker 1: that's not a looper circle. A crescent is a winding

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Speaker 1: and curved road that typically attaches to another road at

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Speaker 1: each end. A drive is a long road that winds

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Speaker 1: around a geographical feature, such as a river or mount.

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Speaker 1: A lane is a narrow road that typically leads to

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Speaker 1: a residential zone and are often found in rural areas.

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Speaker 1: A terrace is a street following the upper portion of

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Speaker 1: a slope, and away is a small street branching off

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Speaker 1: of a road. These passages are usually short and often

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Speaker 1: feature another dead end. Of course, as areas and especially

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Speaker 1: bustling residential areas develop and change. New passes may be

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Speaker 1: built connecting roads that previously ended in dead ends, or

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Speaker 1: buildings or infrastructure may be built blocking what was formerly

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Speaker 1: an intersection. In addition to most places in the United

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Speaker 1: States following fairly standard street naming conventions, most major cities

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Speaker 1: are laid out in a grid system where the streets

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Speaker 1: run at right angles with each other. This makes it

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Speaker 1: relatively easy to find your way around. Chicago took things

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Speaker 1: a step further by selecting the intersection of State Street

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Speaker 1: and Madison Avenue in the heart of the city as

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Speaker 1: its zero coordinates, and this means that if your address

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Speaker 1: is twenty North Lotus, for example, you of fifty four

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Speaker 1: blocks north of State and Madison. When it comes to

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Speaker 1: giving streets their first names, like Maine or Washington or Blueberry,

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Speaker 1: this is generally the province of subdivision developers with the

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Speaker 1: blessing of the municipality. The two groups that have the

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Speaker 1: most veto power over proposed names are the police and

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Speaker 1: fire departments, who want unique monikers that can easily be

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Speaker 1: distinguished in an emergency. To May's episode was written by

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Speaker 1: Melanie rad Zekie McManus and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff is production of I Heart Radios how stuff Works.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other topics that

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Speaker 1: lead down multiple paths, visit our home planet how stuff

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