House numbering
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Image:Hausnummer in Deutschland (2004-01-28).jpeg House numbering is the system of giving a unique number to each building in a street or area, with the intention of making it easier to locate a particular building.
House numbering schemes vary by place, and in many cases even within cities. In some, usually remote, areas of the world, houses are not numbered at all, instead simply being named.
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Asia
Tokyo, Japan uses a system where the city is divided into small sections each with its own numeric code. The houses within that zone are then labelled based on the order in which they were constructed. This system is considered by many to be very inefficient.
Australia
In Australia, most addresses following the European scheme (odd numbers on one side, even on the other). On very long urban roads (e.g. Parramatta Road in Sydney) numbers will typically ascend until the road crosses a council boundary, then commence again at 1 or 2. Long roads can thus have several occurences of each number. In rural areas, where houses and farms are widely spaced, a numbering system based on tenths of kilometres has been devised. Thus a farm 2.3km from the start of the road would be numbered 23, with odds and evens defined as above.
Europe
In Europe the most common house numbering scheme is to number each plot on one side of the road with ascending odd numbers, from 1, and those on the other with ascending even numbers, from 2, or sometimes 0. The odd numbers are usually on the left side of the road, looking in the direction in which the numbers increase. Where additional buildings are inserted or subdivided, these are often suffixed a, b, etc (In Spain, bis, ter). Where buildings are later combined, they may use just one of the original numbers, or give their address as a range (e.g. 13‑15). Note that in this example, this range includes numbers 13 and 15, and does not include number 14. Where some plots are not built upon, there may be considerable gaps in the numbering scheme. In Britain the even numbers will typically, although not always, be on the lefthand side as one moves in a direction away from the centre of the town or village, with lower numbers at the end of the street closest to the town centre.
Houses which surround squares are usually numbered consecutively clockwise.
A less common scheme, found for example in cul de sacs, streets with buildings only on one side and in many Welsh villages, is to number all plots on one side of a street consecutively, continuing clockwise back down on the opposite side of the street. For instance, 10 Downing Street, the official home of the British Prime Minister, is next door to 11 Downing Street, the home of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In Venice, Italy houses are numbered by district, resulting in just six series for the entire city; in Florence houses are given black numbers and businesses red numbers, resulting in just two series.
In Prague and other Czech cities, two numbering systems are used concurrently. Buildings display both a číslo popisné (descriptive number) in red and a číslo orientační (orientation number) in blue. The red number is unique to the building in its section of town and may not be concurrent with addresses of nearby buildings. The blue number is a simple sequential number, similar to the house numbers used in other European cities. Either number may be used in addresses. Sometimes, businesses will use both numbers to avoid confusion, putting the red number first: "Hlavní 20 / 7."
In Sweden, there is also a system (fastighetsbeteckningar) numbering farms and thereby also the houses on them. The numbering is done per village. When a farm is split, either composited numbers (like 2:1 and 2:2) are made to be able differ the farms, or a completely new number, previously unused, can be given to one or both of the farms.
North America
In much of North America, buildings are not numbered according to a simple sequence but rather according to distance from a given baseline. As a result, four- and five-digit addresses are common. Odd numbers are typically on one side of the street, evens on the other.
In cities with a grid pattern of streets, addresses often increase by 100 for each cross street. Addresses may also correlate with a street-numbering system. Thus, in Cleveland, Ohio, a building with the address 900 Euclid Avenue would be at the corner of Euclid Avenue and 9th Street.
In San Francisco, streets are numbered from where they start. As a result, sometimes parallel streets will be numbered in opposite directions. As an example, Broderick St. numbers ascend from south to north, while Masonic Ave., just three blocks away, ascends from north to south. (Navigation in San Francisco can be an enjoyable task for those who like puzzle solving).
Along the Overseas Highway in the Florida Keys, house numbers indicate their distance from Mile Marker 0 in Key West. The mileage is found by dropping the last three digits in the address (for example, 77220 Overseas Highway is 77.2 miles from Mile Marker 0).
Buildings in many rural areas in the United States used to lack these kind of addresses. Instead, an old rural address might have been simply "Rural route 3, Box 15." However, the adoption of 9-1-1 emergency systems has required the adoption of street names and house numbers in rural areas.cs:Označování domů de:Hausnummer fr:Numérotation des rues nl:Huisnummer