A novel class of direction biased handoff algorithms are proposed for improving the handoff performance in urban microcells. Multi-cell handoff properties are obtained for a cell layout consisting of base stations at every other intersection of a Manhattan street grid. The direction biased handoff algorithms are shown to improve cell membership properties by simultaneously reducing the mean number of handoffs and handoff delay. A signal strength based direction estimator is shown improve handoff performance for line-of-sight handoffs.