HN Explorer

19 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 56.9 ms ] thread
techdragon
Ok... What's really suspicious is the alphabetically ordered clusters.

It's almost like someone just labeled a bunch of blank streets with a list of nouns.

Any comparative maps of the area, preferably local ones produced inside the Philippines, would help explain things a lot.

Edit 1: Digging into it further, reveals the area is pretty big... I've rounded up the coordinates, exploring a little. 14.485, 121.023 is pretty much the spot he was writing about in the blog, almost every street is strangely named. But for quicker entry and sharing, 14.48, 121.02, is still squarely in the middle of the area.

---

The area is also the same on:

Bing Maps ( http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=14.485000~121.025000&lvl=16... ) Nokia Here maps ( http://here.com/14.4851019,121.0251471,17,0,0,normal.day )

---

From what I can tell the area these oddly named streets cover is rather extensive. Several municipal regions have the same pattern. These municipal areas show the pattern:

Bakoor City ( https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Bacoor+City,+Cavite,+Ph... )

City of Las Piñas ( https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/City+of+Las+Piñas,+Metr... )

Parañaque ( https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Parañaque,+Metro+Manila... )

Taguig ( https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Taguig,+Metro+Manila,+P... )

Muntinlupa ( https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Muntinlupa,+Metro+Manil... )

City of San Pedro ( https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/City+of+San+Pedro,+Lagu... )

Dasmariñas City ( https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Dasmariñas+City,+Cavite... )

---

I could keep going but Dasmariñas City shows another interesting pattern, the suburb names are pretty generic, such as:

BGY Zone I - B ( https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Bgy.+Zone+I+-+B,+Dasmar... )

Area 1 ( https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+1,+Dasmariñas+City... )

Area 3 ( https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+3,+Dasmariñas+City... )

Area B ( https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+B,+Dasmariñas+City... )

Area C ( https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Area+C,+Dasmariñas+City... )

Area G (

techdragon
Seems I broke something here, I cant actually edit this any more... is there an edit limit I didn't know about? Kind of annoying I cant go back and fix any format issues now.
DanBC
There is a time limit for editing.

Yep, is is sometimes a bit frustrating!

JoeAltmaier
Some places have historically not named their roads. Then westerners come around and say "this won't do, how will we deliver the mail?" and name them all. I'm guessing it all happened just before WWII or something.
phektus
Filipino here. I used to live somewhat near that place, and we used to joke about going to Germany or Australia when what we really mean is going to one of those streets instead of the actual country. These are suburbs where the real estate developer would follow a certain theme for the nomenclature of the streets. We call these suburbs "villages". In my parent's village, the theme are bird names, and our street is called Sand Piper Drive.
saryant
I think that's common with real estate developments everywhere. There's a neighborhood in San Antonio, Texas where all the streets are named after locations in Estonia:

http://i.imgur.com/Z6u2IjI.jpg

pessimizer
Pretty typical. I've seen developments where all of the streets were named after tennis players or golfers.
lmz
OSM has the same data. http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/14.4876/121.0193

This is probably a new development, and they had to name the streets after something.

techdragon
Definitely not 'a new development' See my next edit above.
lmz
New real estate development. Not a new trend. This has been going on for a while where I live too, themed clusters and that (not in the Philippines).
kweks
I was just in Iraq (kurdistan) - and in Dahouk, they have the same.. it was strange arriving in Iraq and driving down Australia road to turn into Montreal street..
aaaabbbb
There's a similar thing in Pittsburgh, where streets are named after locations of battles in the Mexican War. I was a bit confused the first time I saw this.
cafard
And Pennsylvania stands out in having Indiana University of Pennsylvania and California University of Pennsylvania in its state system.
mcv
This is not unusual. Streets need names, and people get increasingly creative. I've lived on Saturn ("Saturnus", the name of an appartment building in Duivendrecht, net Amsterdam), there's a street in the center of Amsterdam called Rusland (Russia), there are towns in Netherland called "America" and "Nederland". And then there's towns that have the same name (which is particularly common in the US, I believe).