Let me see if I understand you correctly. When you play CF you visualize the game in a (sort of) first person view, where paths go forward, back, left and right instead of west, east, north and south?

Ive never bothered with memorizing exact paths, I rather do the whole 3-4 steps ahead in time then adjust as I get to corners. I see the world in a top down fashion, like the DIKU wiki maps. I know general locations and general layouts of roads and areas, thus I can sort of predict what ways to walk.

I know the world well enaugh though, to predict escape patterns then take a shortcut so I can catch them on the run. Ive learned this because I play from europe, and my ping lingers between 150-180 which means running people down is near to impossible.

Essentially, I recommend you stop trying to learn exact paths, and rather focus on location in relation to eachother.