Street names grow haphazardly unless someone early on decrees that there will be system to it, usually at the start of a spurt of building, such as when troops come home from a war.

Logical though it be, a fully numbered grid system like Edmonton, AB makes a navigator's head ache. Judging by the street address, 23456 1234 St. must be between 234 Ave. and 235 Ave., where they intersect 1234th (St., of course). If you mistake street for avenue you may search fruitlessly far away.

It's common to number the avenues (which run E-W in Vancouver, BC, Canada) but name the streets (which run N-S there). This helps a lot in navigating. Where the long side of the block lies along the named co-ordinate then most addresses will be more pleasant sounding and easier to remember (e.g. 1234 Castlegar instead of 1234 32 St.). Vancouver, Canada has blocks of themed street names (provinces, trees, battles) but unfortunately the planner for that area didn't mention to his assistant the alphabetical order he'd envisioned, so they got all jumbled. Click here for an interesting article about Vancouver street naming.

Alphabetic streets are better if they're themed. When the alphabet just repeats like Jim Dixon described, you still need a map to figure out in which part of town to find your "E..." street, but if you can see your address is a mineral or a general or whatever street, you can find the area quickly and then tell when you're getting close or have passed your target. It saves fuel as well as time, and the grouped names prove educational to boot.