Driving doesn't necessarily help, since familiar routes rapidly become instinctive and I don't necessarily pay attention to street names or exit numbers. Our place is on a north-south street between two east-west streets. I know the two east-west streets, but I can't always reliably remember which is which. And *I* know which block to turn at, but not always how many blocks down it is or how far past which light. Of course, it's also true that knowing walking or transit directions doesn't help much with giving driving directions, and vice versa.

At least the Chicago street grid lends itself somewhat to dead reckoning. Suburban Detroit, where I grew up, also had a grid (at one mile intervals). Chicago suburbs are a pain (particularly since what grid structure it has is invariably interrupted by a forest preserve or something whenever I try to make use of it), and in non-grid cities like Boston I can get in trouble without a compass.