Ones background and experience level must be taken into consideration.
I started with an atlas, paper city maps, a CB radio, and if you were lucky, access to a payphone. I think that kind of experience hones ones instincts somehow.
After enough experience, it becomes possible to recognize residential areas on a city map by the street patterns and sometime the names of the streets themselves.
The telephone used to be the failsafe method, but after running LA enough years, I began noticing more and more being unable to always locate an English speaking person at the customer.
GPS, Qualcomm, Mapquest are all useful tools, but it still comes down to getting from point A to point B.
Technology may have changed, but a rookie driver today faces the same challenges of a rookie 50 years ago.
Todays driver may have more tools at his disposal, but he must still learn his craft the old fashioned way, by making mistakes and learning from them.