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Language: en

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I like finding exceptions to rules.

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The sort of things that expose assumptions
about how we think the world works,

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and that confuse any computer system that
isn't set up to accept them.

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Like: streets have names, right?

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Okay, sure, there are some people out there
who'll immediately go,

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ah, no, see, there are lots of streets
that don't have names,

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in rural areas and the developing world,

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or there are the roads that just have
a number or a letter.

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And some of you will go, oh, well, actually,
Japan.

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Most of Japan doesn't name its streets,
it names and numbers its city blocks,

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and besides it's more complicated than that...

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But, okay. In a Western European nation
like Germany,

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in the centre of a large city like Mannheim,

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you'd expect there to be street names.

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Nah. Welcome to the exception to the rule.

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Here inside the Quadrates of Mannheim,
the Squares of the town centre,

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only a few major streets have names.

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Every other building is referred to
by which square it's on, as part of a grid.

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The west half gets the letters A-K;
the east half, L-U,

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and that's followed by the number of blocks
from the centre.

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So you can have C4, or in German "𝕮𝟜" [see-fear],

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which explains why the art gallery on it
is called Zephyr.

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Given the German reputation for humour,
that's a pretty good multilingual pun.

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None of the modern mapping companies know
what to do with this.

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They'd be fine if the whole country ran on
a different system,

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but mixing and matching in the same area,

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in a region that, as far as most people know,
just doesn't do this...

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well, they can't cope.

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Google and Microsoft get confused and give
each road multiple names.

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Apple insist that each road just has one name,
and they're entirely wrong,

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although it's Apple Maps, so, you know(!)

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OpenStreetMap, which is community-led, recognises
full addresses but not the individual blocks,

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although presumably that'll be fixed within
a few hours of this video being uploaded.

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This isn't some modern invention, either.

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This isn't something brought on by future-looking
city planners rebuilding after the Second World War,

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or 80s planners getting ahead of themselves.

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While the numbering patterns have changed
over the years,

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this bit of Mannheim has had some form of
block numbering for a long, long time.

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Why change it just because some programmers
can't figure out how to put it into their database?

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The programmers have only been around for a
few years. This city has been around for centuries.

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The address of a place here in the Quadrates
really is just a number, then a block,

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Mannheim, Germany.

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Even if some computers don't believe it.