Coherent street addresses are long overdue

Now, surely this would be taking away one of the things that make trying to do business in the Middle East so endearing (and, yes, sometimes downright irritating).

Every long-term resident of a Gulf city has had that slightly smug feeling of superiority when watching a newcomer grapple with the complexities of trying to direct a taxi driver or delivery service to their new address: "Umm, well, if you take street 443, Zone b, Compound C West...", and been rewarded for their pains with a gratifyingly blank expression from the person they're directing.

It's what makes you feel like you've finally fitted in, blended into your surroundings and become one of the locals: And one of the region's best known idiosyncratic beauties when doing business here.

Who among us hasn't had to fill in the blank box on delivery instruction forms where, instead of giving a concrete address, the recipient is asked to draw a map, including a listing of all obvious landmarks, to their location.

The aim of the project is to give the city's streets and quarters unique names and a sequentially-structured numbering system. Implementation is due to begin at the end of the year but Norplan, the Norwegian company in charge of designing the system, has said that it is still too early to say what the new system will look like, although the 'guiding principals' have been decided and seem to tick all the boxes:
- The areas and streets should have unique names and logical numbering
- The system should be easy to learn and remember, unambiguous and easy to pronounce in both English and Arabic
- It should be easy to extend to encompass growth and new developments

In fact, when questioned, the project manager could only come up with this delightfully opaque reply: "We don't know what will be implemented but it will either be an implementation of a new address system or upgrading of the existing one."


For the doubters among you, it appears that this schadenfreude when watching newcomers try to cope with the existing system is actually quite commonplace. Juma Mubarak Al Junaibi, the Director-General of Abu Dhabi Municipality has already admitted that the main challenge for the new system is going to be to get the general public to make use of it once it's in place, to which end a large part of the project is to include a public awareness campaign.

Again, rather tellingly, the closest that anyone can get to a deadline for the inception of the new system is that it will be either at "the end of this year, or the beginning of next year."

As it already benefits from a reasonably manoeuvrable grid system Abu Dhabi shouldn't face too many difficulties in the roll out of the new address plan, and as new areas are built they can easily be annexed on to the expanding mapping structure. Initiatives like this are key to opening up a city and attracting businesses in the 21st century, after all it's all very well having an office in a ground-breaking, eye-catching, world-class development - but if no-one can find you then it does defeat the purpose.

The possibilities for the region to evolve beyond the current PO Box postal system are also long overdue. In the modern environment of instant access to information, and the increase in the turn-around speed of all decision making processes, visitors are often left incredulous that postal systems are reliant on somebody physically going to a central depot. For smaller businesses the frequency may even be down to as little as once a week, putting Middle East-based companies at a severe disadvantage to their counterparts in other regions.

Despite all this it will be a shame to see the system that all we old hands have grown to know and tolerate be relegated to history. After all, once you've gotten used to explaining that you live "behind the red building, u-turn after the second signal, last villa on the left" it becomes so much more personal than the alpha-numerical alternative.