Where the streets have no names

The French side has been lacking names for its streets for years. It isn’t rare that mail doesn’t reach its destination because the mailman can’t find the street, the building, the right number… improving and modernizing the addresses is an ambitious project which the Collectivité is now tackling, continuing the one already started by the previous mandate.

For two to three months starting in August, members of a Guadeloupean cabinet – Urbis - which has been mandated by the Collectivité, will carry out work on the ground. In particular, this will involve listing all the streets that have been created since 2012 - or since the last census - as well as the buildings that have since then been built and then give names to these new arteries. "This will also enable us to detect possible duplicates," said Rosette Parotte, head of the Collectivité census and addressing service.

Furthermore, the Collectivité will likely have to rename streets whose names are close and are not recognized by the postal services or other mail order companies. "Currently, the systems only recognize the second name in the wording of an address. For example, if there are two Gumbs streets but with two different first names, only Gumbs is taken into account," explained Rosette Parotte. This obviously creates a lot of problems given the large number of streets concerned with names like Gumbs, Fleming, and Richardson.

"All of this new data will help us to complete our database, our GIS (geographical information system), which we will forward to the IGN and different dealers," explained Guillaume Arnell, the first vice-president in charge of sustainable development, who also wishes to improve the signage at the same time.