Addressing the World: A Political Genealogy of the Street Address

The practice of street addressing - that is, the assigning of house numbers and street names to specific locations - is generally assumed to have its origins in the history of postal communications to facilitate the delivery of mail. This chapter provided an overview of the political genealogy of the street address. It considers the curious lack of scholarship on the spatial histories of street addressing and discusses the small but growing body of literature on the topic. The chapter traces the historical emergence of street addressing practices in different geographical contexts based upon the current state of knowledge. It explains potential avenues of future research on the role of street addressing in the making of a geocoded world. In 1749, a house numbering scheme for Paris was proposed by a French police lieutenant, but the plan was not adopted.