Read a Street Map: Your Sense of Direction

May 31, 2016
street map of san diego

You have good spatial recognition, or maybe you don’t. For example, you happen to be in San Diego. Do you go out of your hotel room heading toward the elevator and go off in the wrong direction? Do you open a street map and feel fairly overwhelmed, fold it back up and throw your hands in the air? In fact, it’s not easy to even fold a map. That’s probably because these maps were folded by a machine at the printing company. So why should you be able to refold it?

Perhaps half the population has these problems. Similarly, many people have trouble with reading a map because they haven’t been taught how in school. And GPS systems talk to you and show a little car going along the street; it shows you the way.

But if you want to understand where you are in the larger context of the area you are visiting, then reading a paper map will show you that. Website maps are not really designed to show detail unless you click them to enlarge. That’s the way to focus on your destination. However, if you’re looking at the larger map, most streets are gray, with no street names.

The trick to reading maps, for example, a street map of San Diego, is to orient yourself towards the north. Then look for the Compass symbol on your paper map and turn the “N” towards the top of the page. Now you are in the correction position (of course, you have already looked up the street name in the Index and found the Grid number the street is found). So if the street you’re searching for is to the right on your map, head off to your right.

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