Borders without order

The result is what Mayor Thomas Menino calls “a hogmosh of undefined lines.”

Police have one set of districts while the City Council has another. That explains how two neighbors can disagree about whether their block is in Roslindale or West Roxbury. Or why the demarcation between Dorchester and Roxbury may be up for debate.

And good luck trying to get residents to agree on where Allston stops and Brighton starts. (Hint: The border largely follows the ZIP code line, which was drawn to help deliver the mail, not to define a neighborhood.)

Boundaries get fuzzy even in the neighborhood parking program. Call the Transportation Department and ask for a map of parking zones; you’ll find yourself out of luck. None exists.

In fact, the most detailed atlas of Boston neighborhoods originates in Chicago, where a company named Big Stick Maps has charted urban boundaries in cities from coast to coast. After almost two years of research and cursing at Boston’s meandering streets, the firm published an illustrated map in 2003 that identifies 114 neighborhoods.

“Boston took forever,” said Christopher Devane, who founded Big Stick after a barroom bet about how many neighborhoods he could name on Chicago’s neatly laid-out grid. “You guys don’t have a right angle in the city. I think the right angle was invented 200 years after Boston was founded.”

By defining Boston’s neighborhood boundaries on paper, Devane did something that few residents have been brave enough to do. The city has always published vague maps that show general locations of neighborhoods without strict boundaries. Officials knew that if they drew clear borders, people would object, no matter where the lines were drawn.

But in March, the Boston Redevelopment Authority made a new attempt. Spurred by advances in digital technology, the agency published a map to coincide with the latest census data. It included distinct red lines that defined exact boundaries, not for every crossroads and square in the city, but for 25 of the larger areas.