Address and road grids in the Philippines

[It's spring 2025, and I am writing this paper, which is half complete, and will be ready by for the 2025 OSM State of the Map conference.]

Abstract

We analyze OpenStreetMap data, finding road name and building address grid patterns in the Philippines.

For road names, places like Bonifacio Global City have quite advanced patterns, including non-overlapping street vs. avenue numbering. Other places like Pasay have odd numbered streets going one direction, and even numbered streets perpendicular.

For patterns that could be improved, we go on to make suggestions, useful one day when a city council renumbers their streets or houses.

Overpass Turbo is used to obtain address polygons and points.

Makefiles are included so the reader can try on their own. KMZs are made with OGR/GDAL.

Keywords: address grids, address planning, Philippines, OpenStreetMap, Overpass Turbo

1. Introduction

   Examining house numbers in parts of Metro Manila, Philippines, we find they often get quite high*, into the thousands. And many parallel streets' homes often have tandem / lockstep numbering. By the way, did you know that such address grids were a standard feature of paper maps, forgotten in the rush to make electronic maps?

   We also find patterns in the numbering of adjacent streets. Alas, we haven't found an integrated addressing / road numbering system, common in the Americas, in the Philippines yet.

2. House addressing grids

   1. Sampaloc, Manial

      

      For example, no matter what street we take, when it crosses España Boulevard we enter its 900 block. After we go past P. Florentino Street, houses addresses on either side of the street are in the 1000 block, etc. Indeed we can start building a table,

      Address grid values.

      900	España Boulevard
      1000	P. Florentino Street
      1100	Piy Margal Street

      1. Ordinances

         All I could find was

         • An Ordinance Providing for the Numbering of Houses and Other Buildings in Quezon City

         which is a simpler system for the community neighboring to the east.

      2. Baselines

         Extrapolating, the "0" line would appear to lie in the Pasig River. Of course so far we have only discussed one of the two axes.

      3. Methods

         1. https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/search?q=addr reveals we want addr:housenumber.

         2. On Overpass Turbo we query for it.

         3. Remaining steps: see our source code and KMZ.

3. Street name grids

   1. Pasay street name grid

      

      Observations

      • Odd numbered streets (running NW/SE) intersecting even numbered streets (running NE/SW) like some cities in Cuba.

      • We modeled it with an algorithm . Alas, if the block sizes were constant the streets would match our red grid lines.

      • In this area there is no coordination between street names and house numbers. No "700 block starts when you cross 7th St."

      Recommendations

      Well, let's say we see how we might fill their lives with sunshine via a custom-fit addressing system. Let's use the Chicago concept where numbers only go up to 60 on normal blocks, but could go up to 99 if needed.

      So how about as we travel northwest and cross 10th St. we enter the 1000 block. Just before reaching 12th Street we are looking at house 1090 or so. Crossing 12th Street we enter the 1200 block. (No 1100 block.) Just before reaching 14th Street we are looking at house number approximately 1249 (because it is an especially short block.) Continuing northwest there us no 1300 block, and we enter the 1400 block as we cross 14th St.

      If instead we insisted on stricter grids, we would cause an unexpected mid-block skip from 1049 to 1201 right next door, which might make sense on a map, but not to the person in the street. Delivery trucks would no longer have the guarantee as to turn either right or left to find 1201. It could be in either block, is all they know.

   2. Caloocan street name grid

      

      

      Observations

      • Avenues run east-west, and (most) Streets (not all numbers used) north-south.

      • No coordination exists between street names and house numbers. No "700 block starts when you cross 7th St."

      Recommendations

      Unhappy with just looking at maps, we decided to "fix their wagon". In our revision we added 70 to all the north-south Streets, and would number the houses according to our single axis system. So City Hall would be something like 7850 8½th Ave. Lane 850. I am sure they will be overjoyed when one day they wake up and find … whereas I will already have fled.

   3. Bonifacio Global City (BGC)

      

      Observations

      • Looking closely at our map, the reader will notice that beyond (north of) 35th street, all the Streets are numbered one less than they should have been. E.g., 36th should have been called 37th. Sad. (Perhaps they wanted all the "big streets" to be even numbers, even though their system still permits odd numbers for east-west streets.) This even forces us when making our grid overlay to have the curious "35½" to deal with the "transition zone".

        Also what should have been called 1st Avenue is called 2nd Avenue. Perhaps to avoid dealing with a "0th Avenue" where what is currently named 1st Avenue lies. That teaches them a lesson for getting too close to the edge. Recommendation: (afterthought) if I were in charge I would at least have had the center point at 25th Avenue and 75th Street, and grow in all four directions from there.

        They were doing very good at a well-fitting grid until this accident, or was it a careless choice, occurred.

      • McKinley Parkway conveniently continues where what might have been called (unlucky?) 13th Street is.

      • We see they use the early part of the alphabet to for interstitial Streets, and the latter part of the alphabet for interstitial Avenues. Both of which are called Lanes. Hence Lane C is where "9⅔ Avenue" would have been. But the ordering jumps gaps:

        Lane	(Avenue)
        A	5⅔
        B	6⅓
        C	9⅔
        D	10⅓

      • 28th St. bends south; 30th St. bends north.

      • Roads are smartly allowed discontinuous segments with the same name. E.g., Lane C, 31st Street, 4th Avenue. All reappear a few blocks later along their same alignment.

      • If one wants to get picky, one could complain that the letter comes after the word Lane, but the number comes before the words Street and Avenue. (But they are surely just trying to conform to majority English usage.)

      • Any roads at an angle to the grid are thankfully called Drives: 21st Drive. I will have to check if there is indeed an ordinance...

        But not if simply a curved road continuation: 5th Avenue.

      • To the northeast there is an area with thirty unrelated numbered avenues.

      • Well how do the building addresses (if any!) coordinate with the street and avenue numbers? We'll it turns out all their addresses are like

        BGC Arts Center
        26th Street corner 9th Avenue
        Bonifacio Global City
        Taguig City, Philippines 1634

        OpenStreetMap address tags simply

        addr:street	26th Street
        addr:street:corner	9th Avenue

        and that's it.

        Well, when they finally get around to numbering buildings in BGC, they can simply use our road number grid map above, adding "00" to all the numbers (× 100). Thus the above address would become "851 26th Street". (Why 851 and not 850? Well that's part of our single axis theory, where the inner sides of the fold are even, and outer odd. Below we will see the outer sides are the south and east sides of streets.)

        We also note that the block size they are using is exactly 100 meters per Avenue or Street number. That would give us a number every two meters. Fifty on this side of the street, fifty on the other.

      • The fold

        So where would that folded single axis be here in BGC? (As indeed they seem to avoid X and Y overlap too.)

        

      Reddit comment.

   visor.ph/wisdom/why-cant-we-just-have-sequential-numbers-for-street-names/

4. Etc.

   1. Twenty+ streets named "Jade" in Quezon City

      Using this query, and pushing "Run", will show you the streets.

   2. Addressing along Dr. A. Santos Avenue, Parañaque

      Running this query we have enough points to indeed detect a (somewhat loose) pattern.

      

      Observations

      • Strict odd addresses on the north, even on the south, side of the road is seen.

      • Our eyes pop out of our head. It seems they are using about 100 numbers per U.S. mile (50 on either side of the road.) For comparison Chicago uses 800 per mile.

        Could this be a rural numbering system, now in a city? Are the lot sizes super big? We will have to investigate further!

      • Yes, there are outliers, like 8006, that need to be probed.

      Programs and KMZ.

   3. How much are addresses used in the Philippines?

      We should investigate how deeply house address numbers are used in the Philippines compared to other countries. Are they on every card in one's wallet, or none? What about in "informal settlements"? How about on utility bills? (One notices even on the mighty US passport, penciling in one's address is optional.)

5. Interviews

   1. Accu Map 2025/02/12 told me:

      There is no central, country-wide planning for house numbers. Also no public database of house numbers. Even within cities or municipalities: except in the city of Manila, that was already built by then. The growth in the past 50 years has been mostly through private communities called Villages or Subdivisions, most of the time gated, the rest being high-rises or squatter areas.

      In these private communities, the numbering follows whatever rules the developer chooses, generally blocks and lots, half of the time without street names.

      In other, public areas:

      • Every time there is a new municipal election and new Barangay (the lowest elected administrative area) captains, they may choose to re-number houses sequentially, either per-Street or for the whole Barangay.

      • Owners of houses in public areas may not like the new number, or get tired of having the number change; so for a small "fee", they will keep an old number. So there are layers of numberings that are present. Also, with Chinese and Catholic communities, they may skip both "4" and "13".

      • To note: Street names are not unique in a City: there are over 20 "Jade Street"s in Quezon City; this breaks most search functions, including Google Maps, Here, Bing Maps and Apple. The exception is OpenStreetMap which does it correctly (just lacking a few entries).

      • There is no provision for numbering when there is a currently empty lot. So numbering will skip it, never mind what happens when the lot gets built eventually…

      In summary, there are pockets of logic, but mostly numbers have to be collected one by one.

To be presented at the 2025 OpenStreetMap State of the Map conference.

*hence URL high.html.

¹https://www.jidanni.org/

Last modified: 2025-03-22 13:12:25 UTC