The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Part 1

Part 2, Chapters 3-4

Part 2, Chapters 5-7

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Street Addresses as a Tool of Social Justice

Central to Deidre Mask’s argument in The Address Book is that street addressing systems can meaningfully improve the lives of people around the world. Throughout the book, Mask highlights how street addressing systems can serve as a catalyst for positive change, aiming to create more equitable and inclusive societies.

Mask’s arguments about the positive impact of addresses hinge on the access they provide to essential services like banking and education. Mask illustrates how individuals without formal addresses, such as those living in informal settlements or unhoused individuals, face immense challenges in accessing basic services. In her chapter on Kolkata, Mask writes that although “the slums seemed to have more serious needs than addresses—sanitation, sources of clean water, healthcare, even roofs to protect them from the monsoon,” it was the lack of a permanent address that “was depriving those living in the slums [of] a chance to get out of them” (19). The juxtaposition in this passage between obvious obstacles (sanitation, lack of clean water, leaky roofs) and seemingly bureaucratic details (an address) demonstrates the deadly importance of permanent street addresses in determining quality of life. Mask shows that the computer-driven addressing systems at use in the Kolkata slums allowed residents to obtain bank accounts, materially improving their living conditions.

The relationship between addresses and access is clearest in Mask’s discussion of homelessness. Describing the research of Sarah Golabek-Goldman on unhoused individuals, Mask writes, “what they really needed, they told her, was an address” (244). As with the residents of the Kolkata slums, Mask argues that while many people would identify sanitation or warmth as the biggest needs of the unhoused, the unhoused people interviewed understand the importance of addresses in accessing services. Mask goes on to explain that, without permanent addresses, many unhoused people who “want to help themselves” (244) are unable to obtain employment because of the stigma against homelessness. She argues that permanent addresses allow unhoused people “a way to pass as not homeless” (248) in order to obtain employment and permanently change their status.

The Address Book thus invites readers to critically examine the broader implications of addressing systems in society. It encourages individuals, policymakers, and organizations to recognize the impact of addresses on the distribution of resources and opportunities. The book urges readers to advocate for inclusive addressing systems that bridge social divides, ensure equal access to services, and contribute to a more just and equitable society.

The Link Between Street Addresses and Inequality

Equally important to The Address Book are Mask’s arguments about the dangerous abuses of street addressing systems. Throughout the book, Mask explores how street addressing systems can have profound impacts on social disparities, exacerbating existing inequalities and creating new ones.

One of the key ways addresses perpetuate inequality is through the historical legacy of segregation, which Mask describes in a variety of contexts. From the earliest instances, Mask suggests, government-sponsored addressing systems perpetuated inequality. In 18th-century Vienna, for example, homes of Christians were numbered using Latin numerals, while “the homes of Jewish people, whom [Empress] Maria Theresa despised, were assigned Roman numerals” (95). This distinction helped to perpetuate existing prejudices by marking Jewish citizens as distinct and separate from the rest of the city and excluding them from the dominant Christian community.

In Nazi Germany, similarly, streets with the word “Jew” in the name demarcated where Jewish Germans were allowed to live and work. In the simplest possible terms, “Church Street was where the Church was, Jew Street was where the Jews lived” (161). These street names were not merely descriptive, but prescriptive: As Mask notes, the street signs “tracked the lives and movements of the Jewish people in Germany” (161) before, during, and after the Nazi administration. By 1933, nearly every city in Germany had a street named in honor of Hitler. These street names both normalized the Nazi regime and established Hitler as a permanent part of the landscape of Germany, further encouraging the spread of his anti-Semitic views and embodying the violence and erasure the Nazis inflicted upon their Jewish victims.

In the modern-day United States, Mask details how street names can also reflect enduring issues of racial inequalities and tensions. As Mask writes, “Jim Crow laws forbade black people from living next to white people,” (177) so that street addresses could be used to identify the race of the resident. In post-segregation America, racial fault lines can still be traced through city mapping, with streets named after MLK usually belonging to predominantly Black neighborhoods that are underfunded in comparison to predominantly white neighborhoods. Mask also notes that, in the southern United States, “more than a thousand streets bear the names of Confederate leaders” (181), reflecting ongoing issues of racial discrimination and the vestiges of white supremacy.

The Address Book therefore stresses how street addresses can perpetuate inequality within societies. Through historical analysis and real-life examples, the book exposes the ways in which addressing systems contribute to disparities in political representation and access to resources. By drawing attention to these issues, Mask invites readers to reflect on the structural inequalities embedded in addressing systems and to consider the need for more inclusive and equitable approaches.

The Importance of Street Addresses in Building Community

Throughout the book, Mask argues that addresses serve as more than just physical location identifiers—they also play a vital role in fostering social connections, building collective identity, and reflecting communal values.

In her discussion of new addressing systems in Kolkata, Mask writes that “inclusion is one of the secret weapons of street addresses” (30). Researchers found that, in addition to providing access to crucial social services, formal addresses in Kolkata “were helping to empower the people who lived there by helping them to feel a part of society” (30, emphasis added). This feeling of community enables people who need help to ask for it and to make connections with people who can provide support. This is especially important in informal settlements, which are, by their very definition, cut off from wider society.

Addresses and street names can also reflect a community’s sense of identity and values. In her discussions of Iran and East Berlin, Mask notes how street names dedicated to revolutionary figures reflected the political values shared by the communities at the time. In revolution-minded Iran, the renaming of Winston Churchill Street in favor of Bobby Sands, a member of the IRA, reflected burgeoning anti-colonial and anti-Western sentiment in Tehran. In East Berlin under the USSR, street names dedicated to communist heroes solidified ties to the wider Soviet Union, while after the fall of the Berlin Wall those same street names were rejected by the reunified, democratic city. Likewise, a reluctance to change street names or to honor certain figures can also reflect the state of the community, as in the case of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland’s refusal to name any street after Bobby Sands and Nelson Mandela’s reluctance to rename Afrikaner-inspired streets. In both the Irish and South African contexts, assigning or changing street names can carry political connotations that can destabilize hard-won peace.

By highlighting these aspects of street addressing systems, The Address Book emphasizes the significance of street addresses in building a strong and cohesive community fabric. Mask prompts readers to reflect on the ways addresses contribute to the social, cultural, and economic aspects of a community, exposing how street names can reflect and shape the communities of which they are a part.