There is a link between whether a culture's language requires temporal markers and various economic markers.
"For example, a German speaker predicting rain can naturally do so in the present tense, saying: Morgen regnet es which translates to ‘It rains tomorrow’. In contrast, English would require the use of a future marker like ‘will’ or ‘is going to’, as in: ‘It will rain tomorrow’" [1]. It is found that "speakers of [timeless] languages: save more, retire with more wealth, smoke less, practice safer sex, and are less obese."
[1] http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/keith.chen/papers/Langu...
Interestingly the street grid isn't a language feature.
As you say, this isn't a language feature. For me the concepts of N,E,W,S and the easy visualization matters more than my language. I picture a map, but not the words on the map.
It sounds like you're not a native -- in your observation, is the ability to navigate easily in the 'rotated downtown' area correlated with having grown up nearby?
That would make a cool study.
I live in a grid-based city and I would dispute that. I'm pretty comfortable with cardinal directions but that hasn't been true of nearly anyone I've tried to provide directions to.
One famous example is the Guugu Yimithirr language[0], which uses absolute directions (North, South, East, West) instead of relative ones (left, right, in front of, behind). So one would say, "Can you pass me the salt to your North?" As a result, people in these cultures are constantly keeping track of which way North is: their language forces them to.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guugu_Yimithirr_language