Wayfinding in Ulaanbaatar

In 2018, my cousin arrived in Ulaanbaatar city from the rural area of Govi-Altai province for higher education. When he first arrived in the city, he always called me to find different places in the city. Every time we hung out, I used to tell him to just stay at the bus station because if he went anywhere else, it would be difficult for us to find each other.

Ulaanbaatar is a small city with 1.4 million residents. Every year, around 30 to 35 thousand students arrive from the countryside to study at the major universities in Mongolia, which are all located in the downtown area of Ulaanbaatar. In 2015, Gogo.mn, one of the main journalism websites, interviewed students who came to the city for the first time. According to the interview, the main struggle for the students was navigating around the city. One of the students said “When I first arrived, Sukhbaatar Square is the only place I knew. So every time I met someone, I used to meet them in the square.” I had a similar experience when I first moved to NYC, but all of my problem was solved when I got comfortable with Google Maps. However, online map is not accessible enough in Ulaanbaatar because both smartphone and internet connection are not easy to afford for many students coming from a rural area. In addition, bus (the only public transportation in Mongolia) routes are so confusing that many students end up getting lost in the wrong bus.

Let’s take a look at a different demographic. Every year, around 200 thousand tourists visit Mongolia. As Ulaanbaatar is the only metropolitan area in the country, this is the place where tourists arrive first and get ready for their adventurous trip to the countryside. When I was in middle school, bumping into tourists and helping them to find their destination was my favorite activity. Most tourists come to the city with the expectation of using Google Maps and street signs in the city, but unfortunately, most of them are in a language they don’t understand. And once again, the public transportation system is too confusing with the “foreign language.”

Wayfinding became a topic on top of my mind after living in four different cities (Ulaanbaatar, New York City, Harrisburg, and Abu Dhabi) in the last three years. As Goffredo said, a sense of diminution can be manifested anywhere, and it is evident to me everywhere I go. I would call my case a diminution of unfamiliarity. However, what’s important to me is how fast I can get over this sense. Did not take long. It is not because I am a super adaptable person or fully aware of my surroundings; in fact, I am just me. However, streets, wayfinding systems, and maps were all designed to fit into my intuition. What helped me most to get over that sense of diminution was the well-designed streets and wayfinding system.

Coming out of my local context and seeing different places helped me to see the problem I experienced for my whole life but did not notice as I was not the subject of that problem. I was a bystander. Or at least, I made myself a bystander of that problem when it was my problem.

Last week, I started another book, Signage and Wayfinding Design by Chris Calori, and David Vanden-Eynden, even if I did not finish my previous 3 books. The book emphasizes a lot on the field of environmental graphic design, and how the built-in environment can help a person to find their orientation in case the phone turns off, and there is no longer an online map. So, even in 2023, redesigning the Google Maps would not be the solution of wayfinding. There should be a deep understanding of geography, culture, language, behavior, etc to solve the wayfinding problem.

I would not say I excel at those. But I will try to understand my hometown as much as I can.

Dissimilar to other cities I know, there is not any consistent block or grid system in Ulaanbaatar. In addition, due to fast-paced urbanization and land ownership since 1990, the initial urban plan of the city has been disturbed into an illogical blend of random buildings. However, the street structure cannot be restructured in this settlement of more than 100 years.

Street Signage

When I thought about street signs in Ulaanbaatar, I realized that I barely see any signs in the street. That is partly because I lived there for 20 years and never had to use the street signs. But, it is also partly because most streets do not have signs. I had to go through Google Maps to refresh my memory on existing street signs. This is what they look like:

The green signs are the new signs that mark the intersection of two main avenues. Unfortunately, these green signs are the only signs in the city that are not attached to a wall, but a traffic light. The blue one is the street name in the Mongolian language, attached to a wall.

The problem with the existing signage system is its visibility and language restrictions. Since the current signs are attached to the walls of the building, it is more likely to be ignored or hard to read depending on the angle. According to Calori and Vanden-Eynden, a designer who is designing signage should consider multiple aspects including viewing distance, viewing angles, physical obstructions, etc.

This picture is an example of signage that did not consider physical obstruction, tree when amounting. I could even argue that the tree was planted after they put the street signs because these signs are ancient.

As I envision, this will be simply solved by attaching the street signs to the traffic lights. I also added an English street name which I will elaborate on later.

The Monglish

However, this emergence caused the middle ground between Mongolian and English, what I would call Monglish. Many signs with English-named places around the city are either English-only or Monglish. For example, a place named Peace Mall has a sign that says “Peace Mall худалдааны төв.” “Худалдааны төв” means shopping center in Mongolian. So the sign technically says “Peace Mall Mall.” Someone who does not know English, especially elders who are less familiar with the latin alphabet, are vulnerable victims of this language atrocity.

Across the street from the Peace Mall, there is PC Mall which is a tech store chain. PC Mall does not even have any Mongolian labels or signages. For Mongolians who are familiar with Latin letters but do not know English as a language, both Peace Mall and PC Mall will be pronounced “Pea-See Mall.” This is exactly why every sign with a foreign name and label should have Mongolian romanization. This rule applies samely to the street signs as I mentioned before. Every street should have its translated name on its signs.

In Abu Dhabi, I have never struggled with finding specific locations despite not knowing any Arabic. The reason is simple: every sign/label is in both Arabic and English. A standard that requires both Mongolian names and English names will clear the separation of young and old, monolingual and bilingual, local and foreign, and us and them.

Marking the landmark

When I first arrived in New York City, Washington Square Park was my navigator. Luckily, many campus locations are relative to the park itself, and buildings were named related to the square itself. This system helped me to navigate my way around the campus, and get used to the directions in the new city.

As we read before, Sukhbaatar Square is a landmark place for both new residents and tourists in the city. Even for the locals, Sukhbaatar Square is indeed considered the center of the city. Labeling sides of the square could be a beneficial system for those who are starting their journey from the square.

When I was surfing Google Maps, I found this big unnecessary sign on the Southwest corner of the Square. It is simply saying “Wish you a warm welcome in Mongolia.” If we are warmly welcoming someone, aren’t we supposed to make them feel warmly welcomed? This sign could be used for many other fruitful purposes such as directions to different places (malls, bus stations, bathrooms, theater) nearby, and attach their welcoming message to it.

Interestingly, in our culture, wayfinding has always been in relation to landmarks. In a countryside of empty fields, even the most well-drawn map cannot serve as an aid. When people get lost in the countryside, what they usually do is drive until find a family and ask for directions. If they successfully finish that step, the answers they would get sound like “When you go over 2 hills, you will find an abandoned fence. Go to the right side of the fence for 40 kilometers and you will find some well and three hills next to it. When you go over the third hill, you’ll find your destination.” Obviously, I made this answer up, but it is not far from the reality. The only map that will navigate you in the Mongolian countryside is the mental map made of landmarks of the earth itself.

Another interesting term I learned from Signage and Wayfinding Design was placemaking. I understood placemaking as a practice of combining environmental graphic design with other disciplines of art and design. The purpose of placemaking, as I understood, is to create a landmark in the city that serves both as a navigator and a monument. One of the examples in the book was an information kiosk in Chinatown New York City. It serves as both an informational booth and a thematic landmark that emphasizes the vibe of Chinatown.

In non-grid-structured cities like Ulaanbaatar could improve the general orientation through creating landmarks, and address buildings nearby subjective to the landmark.

The conclusion that will not be concluded

These are the observations I had on top of my mind, ready to write down and send to the city mayor. However, while I was writing this blog post and looking back at my hometown for one more time, I found out about so many other underlying problems connected to what is beyond wayfinding.

These problems I pointed out are at the surface level which makes me sure that many designers and urban planners must have talked about this for ages. Maybe ones at the city authority do not care, or maybe keeping the city inaccessible benefits their corruption… Who knows? What I know is we should be constantly talking about it until the zeitgeist is no longer about separation. Talk as a designer. Talk as a citizen. Talk as one who is included in the most exclusive city.