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"An exuberant work of popular history: the story of how streets got their names and houses their numbers, and why something as seemingly mundane as an address can save lives or enforce power. When most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or a traveler won't get lost. But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created to find you. Addresses arose out of a grand Enlightenment project to name and number the streets, but they are also a way for people to be identified and tracked by those in power. As Deirdre Mask explains, the practice of numbering houses was popularized in eighteenth-century Vienna by Maria Theresa, leader of the Hapsburg Empire, to tax her subjects and draft them into her military. In many parts of the world, your address can reveal your race and class, causing them to be a shorthand for snobbery or discrimination. In this wide-ranging and remarkable book, Mask looks at the fate of streets named after Martin Luther King, Jr., the wayfinding means of ancient Romans, how Nazis haunt the streets of modern Germany, and why numbered streets dominate in America but not in Europe. The flipside of having an address is not having one, and we see what that means for millions of people today, including those who live in the slums of Kolkata, on the streets of London, or in post-earthquake Haiti. Filled with fascinating people and histories, The Address Book illuminates the complex and sometimes hidden stories behind street names and their power to name,to hide, to decide who counts, who doesn't-and why"--… (altro)
I originally heard about this book on a podcast and as a snail mailer, it piqued my interest. The book was so interesting and ranks right up there with my favourite narrative non-fiction - [b:The One-Cent Magenta: Inside the Quest to Own the Most Valuable Stamp in the World|30753994|The One-Cent Magenta Inside the Quest to Own the Most Valuable Stamp in the World|James Barron|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1476031541l/30753994._SX50_.jpg|51302425]. There were chapters on people living without addresses, how the homeless are marginalised without addresses, the naming of streets, the clamour for 'privileged' street addresses, new apps and ideas to get those living in refugee camps, shanty towns and on the streets on the grid so they can improve their situations without judgement. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in history, sociology, social justice and development and more. It is a really well researched and interesting book. I requested that my local library purchase this book and I borrowed it but this is a book I would really like to own. ( )
This is the book I never knew I wanted to read, but I'm so glad I did! It's a well-researched and fascinating exploration of the history and cultural significance of addresses. Mask expertly traces the development of addresses from ancient times to the present day and shows how they have been used to shape societies and individuals.
I was glued to the pages, deeply fascinated by the various discussions and personal anecdotes woven throughout. I appreciated learning about the way addresses were used to enforce racial segregation in the United States, for example.
The book also delves into the role of addresses in shaping modern cities, from the development of the grid system in Manhattan to the implementation of house numbering in London. Mask shows how these systems were initially met with resistance but ultimately led to increased efficiency and a more ordered society. She also discusses how addresses have been used to reflect and reinforce social hierarchies, such as through the use of elite postal codes and prestigious street names.
Throughout the book, Mask expertly weaves together historical research and personal anecdotes. These stories add a human element to the book and help to illustrate how addresses have impacted people's lives over time.
Overall, this is a thought-provoking and illuminating read that sheds light on an often-overlooked aspect of our daily lives. Mask's engaging writing style and careful research make this a must-read for anyone interested in the history of cities, urban planning, and societal issues. ( )
Well. This book could be called "The Society Book," since it really is all about societies around the world, and how the presence or absence of an address affects people. Structurally, I felt the chapter titles were much more specific than the content tended to be. Which is not a bad thing -- the chapter about street names in Iran tracks the history of the Irish troubles and the impact revolutions in other parts of the world are felt, as much as discussing the complex issues of civil organization in Iran, and the history of numbered streets in Philadelphia is more about the history of William Penn and Quakerism than about how that city is organized. It all just speaks to how much we are defined by where and how we live. I never really thought before about how important it is to locate yourself in the world, not just the city you live in, but the precise part of that city, the name of your street, the conventions that identify not just where you live but who you are. Who knew that "vanity addresses" were a thing in cities like New York, where an address can affect everything from the value of your property to the kind of customers you might get and the way people view you (and how those addresses can misidentify your location to the point where emergency services might not find you...) And in the last few pages of this book, the author introduces "what3words," which is a tech startup that has divided the entire planet into a grid of 3-meter squares, and assigned a unique set of 3 words to each square (in more than 30 languages), so that if you have an address or a spot on a map, you can find the 3 words and use them to locate yourself. It is an interesting approach to a difficult problem. I found this book absolutely fascinating. While the thesis can sometimes be hidden within the wide-ranging contexts the author calls up, I found myself drawn into every chapter, which makes address and identity parts of issues that are so much bigger, and yet play such a crucial role. ( )
I never thought about addresses much before, but this book demonstrates just how powerful they can be. The German Nazis understood this power and used addresses as a form of propaganda. Some people perceive addresses to express class while others see the need for an address as a barrier to upward mobility or safety (how can an ambulance find you when you have no address to provide). Yes, there are tangents in every chapter, but I saw them as adding richness and depth to the overall discussion of addresses. ( )
Structurally, narrative nonfiction tends to work either like a freight train (progressing in a straight line from Point A to Point B) or like a horseback rider (jumping fences to gallop across fields of unwieldy facts); count Mask among the horsy set. “The Address Book” is her first book, and she is already a master at shoehorning in fascinating yet barely germane detours just for kicks.... How can a book about class, poverty, disease, racism and the Holocaust be so encouraging? Mask populates her daunting inquiries with a cast of stirring meddlers whose curiosity, outrage and ambition inspire them to confront problems ignored by indifferent bureaucracies.
Journalist Mask’s entertaining and wide-ranging debut investigates the history of street addresses and their “power to decide who counts, who doesn’t, and why.” ... Mask’s fluid narration and impressive research uncover the importance of an aspect of daily life that most people take for granted, and she profiles a remarkable array of activists, historians, and artists whose work intersects with the evolution and meaning of street addresses. This evocative history casts its subject in a whole new light.
An impressive book-length answer to a question few of us consider: “Why do street addresses matter?” In her first book, Mask, a North Carolina–born, London-based lawyer–turned-writer who has taught at Harvard and the London School of Economics—combines deep research with skillfully written, memorable anecdotes to illuminate the vast influence of street addresses as well as the negative consequences of not having a fixed address.... A standout book of sociological history and current affairs.
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"In Lübeck, on 20 March (1933), a large number of people were taken into so-called protective custody. Soon after began the renaming of the streets."
--Willy Brandt, Links und frei. Mein Weg 1930-1950 (Left and Free: My Path 1930-1950)
Dedica
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For Paul, as he well knows
Incipit
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In some years, more than 40 percent of all laws passed by the New York City Council have been street name changes. -Introduction
On a hot, fragrant February morning in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), I took a walk with Subhashis Nath, a social workers, to the Bank of Baroda in Kalighat, one of the city's oldest neighborhoods. -Chapter 1, How Can Street Addresses Transform the Slums?
Citazioni
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Addresses, the UPU argues, are one of the cheapest ways to lift people out of poverty, facilitating access to credit, voting rights, and worldwide markets. But this is not just a problem in the developing world. Soon, I learned that parts of the rural United States don’t have street addresses either.
The slums seemed to have more serious needs than addresses—sanitation, sources of clean water, healthcare, even roofs to protect them from the monsoon. But the lack of addresses was depriving those living in the slums a chance to get out of them. Without an address, it’s nearly impossible to get a bank account. And without a bank account, you can’t save money, borrow money, or receive a state pension.
In the 1980s, the World Bank was zeroing in on one of the driving forces behind poor economic growth in the developing world: insecure land ownership. In other words, there was no centralized database of who owned any given property, which made it difficult to buy or sell land, or use it to get credit. And it’s hard to tax land when you don’t know who owns it.
Street addresses boosted democracy, allowing for easier voter registration and mapping of voting districts. They strengthened security, as unaddressed territories make it easy for crime to flourish. (On a less positive note, they also make it easy to find political dissidents.)
inclusion is one of the secret weapons of street addresses. Employees at the World Bank soon found that addresses were helping to empower the people who lived there by helping them to feel a part of society.
In other words, without an address, you are limited to communicating only with people who know you. And it’s often people who don’t know you who can most help you.
Addresses made pinpointing disease possible.
Location and disease are inseparable for epidemiologists.
House numbers were not invented to help you navigate the city or receive your mail, though they perform these two functions admirably. Instead, they were designed to make you easier to tax, imprison, and police. House numbers exist not to help you find your way, but rather to help the government find you.
New York was founded as an outpost of the Dutch West India Company for the sole purpose of making money. Indeed, the Dutch colonists, unlike the English Puritans, rather liked their homeland. The Dutch encouraged immigrants from all over to populate the city precisely because they didn’t want to do it themselves. These early New Yorkers were obsessed with accumulating wealth.
In 1750, Gottlieb Mittelberger, a German immigrant, wrote a list of those he found in Pennsylvania: “Lutherans, Reformed, Catholics, Mennonites or Anabaptists, Hernhunter or Moravian Brethren, Pietists, Seventh Day Baptists, Dunkers, Presbyterians, Newborn, Freemasons, Separatists, Freethinkers, Jews, Mohammadeans, Pagans, Negroes and Indians.” But also listed were “many hundred unbaptized souls there that do not even wish to be baptized.”
Barthes had been invited to lecture in Japan. His topic was “the structural analysis of narrative.” The lecture was an excuse to get to Tokyo. He was in his fifties, and already famous in France, perhaps the only country in the world where a literary theorist could be famous. He traveled to Japan, as one commentator has explained, “to relieve himself, for awhile at least, of the immense responsibility of being French.”
Instead of naming its streets, Tokyo numbers its blocks. Streets are simply the spaces between the blocks. And buildings in Tokyo are, for the most part, numbered not in geographical order, but according to when they were built.
Urban neighborhoods in the seventeenth century were broken into rectangular blocks (chō), and those owning property in the block had some responsibility for its governance. The block became the key unit for urban administration and geography, and a group of blocks would often share a name.
When Shelton was growing up in Nottingham, his teacher gave him a sheet of lined paper and taught him to write the alphabet. The goal was to write letters neatly along the straight line,
Emiko is from Japan; her writing paper looked nothing like the paper both he and I remembered. Japanese has three different kinds of scripts, but the bulk of written Japanese uses kanji, characters borrowed from Chinese. Kanji are logograms—each character represents a word or idea.
And kanji are not written on lines. Instead, Emiko told Barrie how in Japan their paper did not have lines but dozens of square boxes. (The paper is called genkō yōshi, and is still used in Japanese schools today.) Each kanji acted independently; each was perfectly understandable on its own, unlike English letters, which make no sense unless they are put together in lines and read from left to right to make words.
Westerners fixated on streets—lines—and insisted on naming them. But in Japan, the streets themselves, as one commentator has said, “seem to have too little significance in the Japanese urban scheme of things to warrant the prestige that names confer.” The Japanese, Shelton theorized, focused on area—or blocks.
Joseph Goebbels was Hitler’s man tasked with making the Nazi message stick. “The task of a gifted propagandist,” he wrote, “is to take that which many have thought and put it in a way that reaches everyone from the educated to the common man.” A simple message, repeated in the right context, could worm its way into the mind and feast forever. And what message is more simple than a street name?
The newly chosen names, replacing the communists on the streets, often seemed deliberately provocative—Karl-Marx-Platz, in Dresden, was renamed Palaisplatz (Palace Square) and Friedrich-Engels-Straße became Koenigstraße (King Street). The joining of East and West Germany was not a merger, as one anthropologist has argued, but a “corporate takeover.”
Their inability to translate between the names in their hometown left them “speechless,” Christiane wrote. “We cannot talk about places that we have no common name for. Talking about cities, schools, and streets in East Germany, you have to translate between old, new, and very old.”
when the Ku Klux Klan was reborn in the years following 1915, its strongest and most violent branch was in Florida. On the day of the 1920 presidential election, just a few months after Young bought the land for Hollywood, the KKK in Ocoee, Florida, murdered almost 60 African Americans. Ocoee’s surviving black community hid in the marshes, while Julius “July” Perry hung from a telephone pole, next to a sign: “This is what we do to niggers who try to vote.” Floridians lynched at least 161 blacks between 1890 and 1920—a rate three times higher than Alabama, and twice as high as Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana. Florida’s state constitution disenfranchised black people and forbade white teachers from teaching them.
A street name is a kind of monument, too; in the South, more than a thousand streets bear the names of Confederate leaders. But it’s not just the South. Streets on an army base in Brooklyn are named after Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. Ohio, a Union State, has three streets named after Confederate generals; Pennsylvania, another Union State, has two. A district in Alaska, along the Bering Sea in an area that is 95 percent Alaska Native, was until recently named after Wade Hampton, one of the South’s largest slaveholders, a lieutenant of the Confederate cavalry, and later, governor of South Carolina. So it’s not just about the vanquished honoring their heroes. America seemed to want to celebrate the Confederacy even though the Confederates had fought to destroy America itself.
During Reconstruction, the period following the Civil War, many Northerners looked down on the former rebels with the expected enmity of former foes, and they were often optimistic about the future of African Americans. But that changed, as historian Nina Silber has written, when, “increasingly, northern whites bowed to the racial pressures of reunion.” Northerners began to “overlook the history of American slavery, and came to view the southern blacks as a strange and foreign population,” while at the same time adopting a tender attitude toward the idea of Southern manliness.
We want our lives to be predictable, and predictability requires a “narrative link” between the present and the past that reassures us that everything is as it should be. We salt away our memories, bronze them in parks, and tattoo them on street signs to try to force our future societies to be more like our past ones. So memorializing the past is just another way of wishing about the present. The trouble is that we don’t always share the same memories.
For many people, a street named after Martin Luther King can only be a black street. And for them, a black street will always be a bad street. No parks, no boutiques, no evidence to the contrary will ever make them feel any differently.
Most new regimes want to rebrand the landscape to cast away the past, to show how radically the world has changed. Mandela took the opposite approach. Keeping the old names was, perhaps, a tactic to make the revolution seem less revolutionary, the peace less fragile.
Philosopher Henri Lefebvre has said that “A revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized its full potential.” If Mandela didn’t want to change names because he didn’t want to make it too obvious a revolution had happened—well, in that respect, he might have succeeded too well.
In New York, even addresses are for sale. The city allows a developer, for the bargain price of $11,000 (as of 2019), to apply to change the street address to something more attractive. (Cashier’s check or money order only, please.) The city’s self-named vanity address program is an unusually forthright acknowledgment that addresses—rather than just locations—can be sold to the highest bidder.
Police and firemen might struggle to find a building with a Fifth Avenue address that is not actually on Fifth Avenue (one problem Manhattan and rural West Virginia share). In Chicago, where a similar program allowed developers to manipulate addresses, thirty-one-year-old Nancy Clay died in an office fire when firefighters didn’t realize that One Illinois Center was actually on the less grandly named East Wacker Drive.
In the UK, addresses ending in “Street” fetched less than half of those that ended with “Lane.” “Is it the association of the word street—street urchins and streetwalkers?” Richard Coates, a professor of linguistics, asked in the Guardian. “You don’t get avenue urchins, do you?” Disturbingly, houses on roads named “King” or “Prince” were also worth more than those on “Queen” or “Princess.”
By definition, homeless people don’t have homes. But an address is not a home. An address, today, is an identity; it’s a way for society to check that you are not just a person but the person you say you are.
Today, we know that while the incidence of mental health and addiction is higher in the homeless population, many more have simply fallen on hard times. (Severe mental illness is also more visible in people who live on the streets, rather than in their cars or on friends’ sofas.) Families with children make up a third of the homeless population. And many people without permanent homes are already working; in no state in America today can anyone afford a two-bedroom apartment on a minimum-wage salary.
Digital addresses will make life easier. But I don’t see them making it any richer.
Ultime parole
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History is probably against me. This isn't the first time we have revolutionized the ways we find each other. But in the eighteenth century, residents protested violently when officials marched through their villages painting numbers on their home with that thick ink made from oil and boiled bones. The people understood the new numbers meant that they could now be found, taxed, policed, and governed, whether they like it or not. They understood that addressing the world is not a neutral act. Do we?
"An exuberant work of popular history: the story of how streets got their names and houses their numbers, and why something as seemingly mundane as an address can save lives or enforce power. When most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or a traveler won't get lost. But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created to find you. Addresses arose out of a grand Enlightenment project to name and number the streets, but they are also a way for people to be identified and tracked by those in power. As Deirdre Mask explains, the practice of numbering houses was popularized in eighteenth-century Vienna by Maria Theresa, leader of the Hapsburg Empire, to tax her subjects and draft them into her military. In many parts of the world, your address can reveal your race and class, causing them to be a shorthand for snobbery or discrimination. In this wide-ranging and remarkable book, Mask looks at the fate of streets named after Martin Luther King, Jr., the wayfinding means of ancient Romans, how Nazis haunt the streets of modern Germany, and why numbered streets dominate in America but not in Europe. The flipside of having an address is not having one, and we see what that means for millions of people today, including those who live in the slums of Kolkata, on the streets of London, or in post-earthquake Haiti. Filled with fascinating people and histories, The Address Book illuminates the complex and sometimes hidden stories behind street names and their power to name,to hide, to decide who counts, who doesn't-and why"--
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