My interactive map shows the orientations of both 'streets' and 'avenues'. The radial chart on top of the map visualizes this more explicitly, showing the overall orientation of all the streets and avenues in the current map view (zoom into Lower Manhattan and see how the orientation of avenues and streets becomes less strict).īy exploring the map you can see 'streets' in Manhattan run almost exclusively west to east while 'avenues' run north to south (obviously because of the directions of the Hudson and East Rivers these are offset from the true cardinal directions). Simply by looking at the map you can tell that streets and avenues run in distinctly different directions. On the map all roads named 'Avenue' are colored gold and all roads named 'Street' are colored blue. My Street Orientations map visualizes the directions of all roads called 'avenue' and 'street' in Manhattan. It is possible to visualize this pattern very effectively with an interactive map and a radial chart.
For example in some cities you might find that all roads called 'Avenue' run north to south, while all roads called 'Street' run west to east (or vice versa depending on the city).
In many American cities the street grid system is often reflected in the names of the city's streets.
