Philly is a square kind of city. Plots and constructions fit between the perpendicular streets that form the blocks that feed the city\u2019s grid.<\/p>\n
Modern architecture reshaped some squares into rectangles. Nevertheless, the grid system persists<\/a>, helping Philadelphians navigate.<\/p>\n But blocks aren\u2019t an exact science, and <\/b>some don\u2019t have an easily understandable name. Trying to figure out what areas encompass a block police and news outlets sometimes use to describe incidents, a reader asked Curious Philly<\/a>, The Inquirer\u2019s forum for questions about the city and region: What makes something a unit block in Philadelphia?<\/p>\n For Jeffry Doshna, associate professor of city planning and community development at Temple University<\/a>, a unit block is a term associated with cities that operate on a grid. It refers to a particular block where the house numbers are less than a hundred.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we say the 900 block of Girard Avenue, that would be the buildings between Ninth and 10th Streets on Girard,\u201d Doshna said. \u201cIt\u2019s a way to designate which block it is based on the numbering.\u201d<\/p>\n However, the words \u201cunit block\u201d stop being used when house numbers exceed 99, according to the professor. <\/p>\n \u201cUnit block is 0 to 99; the 100 block is 100 to 199; the 200 block is 200 to 299. It goes up as high as we have street numbers in the city<\/a>,\u201d Doshna said.<\/p>\n In the past year, Philadelphians may have heard the phrase \u201cunit block\u201d on news stories, describing an area where an incident happened without providing the specific house number. In September, a man was shot in West Philadelphia<\/a>, with police reporting the shooting location as the \u201cunit block <\/a>of North Frazier Street.\u201d <\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t apply just for cities with widespread grid systems like Philly. Right before Christmas, a Bucks County<\/a> man was struck by a wood chipper in Lower Southampton Township. Authorities reported the incident as on \u201cthe unit block<\/a> of Valley View Road.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a way for us to say \u2018where,\u2019 to let people know what block something happened on, without giving a specific address,\u201d Doshna said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philly is a square kind of city. Plots and constructions fit between the perpendicular streets that form the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":477528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,216304,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-477527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-unit-block-philadelphia-police-reports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115802694184149347","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}