A place does not need to incorporated to be a place=town, city, village. That is not how it works anywhere in OSM - there are many unincorporated places with these tags, worldwide. The tagging in Ottawa is a good guide, with e.g. Richmond a village, but e.g. Centretown and Stittsville place=suburbs, based on distinctness. DannyMcD
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 1:53 PM OSM Volunteer stevea < stevea...@softworkers.com wrote: > On Jan 24, 2019, at 7:50 AM, Danny McDonald <mparra...@gmail.com> wrote: > > My understanding of place tagging is that place=city, place=town, and > place=village are for distinct urban settlements, whether or not they are > separate municipalities. > > Correct, in that these tags can be placed upon a node, way or relation (if > a boundary relation, a node with role admin_centre is correct). Sometimes > a way (often a closed polygon) is not precisely known, or is, but license > restrictions prevent those data from entering OSM. In that case, a simple > node tagged place=* with appropriate value is used, as documented at > https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Key:place . Though, be aware and careful > regarding "incorporated" areas; see below. > > > Place=suburb is for large parts of urban settlements (such as North York > in Toronto, or Kanata in Ottawa). > > While I am not a political scientist, I did participate in the development > of consensus in the United_States in > https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States_admin_level , a complex task > indeed (and I'll say we only have it "largely correct," certainly not > "exactly correct"). While Canada has similarities, it certainly is unique > in admin_level, appropriately documented at > https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Canada_admin_level . Yet an important concept > found in many countries, Canada included, is that of "incorporation" — > whether an urban settlement is a "body corporate." Cities always are, > suburbs and towns, depending on differing context for each of these, may or > may not be. > > > Whether to classify a place as a place=city/town/village or place=suburb > depends on the facts on the ground (I.e. whether a place is part of a > larger urban settlement), and not primarily on municipal/administrative > boundaries. > > I can't speak for all of Canada, but I can speak to what OSM documents in > our place=* wiki: that urban and rural populated places are distinguished > by two separate tables there, so it is useful to understand how OSM > characterizes these as slightly different (with specific tags in each > table). This is regardless of how any particular country might use the > same names. For example, place=suburb has a very specific semantic as it > is used in OSM, contrasted with how "real world" "suburb" might mean an > incorporated (smaller) city near a (larger) city, OR it might mean a > district/area/small region INSIDE of an incorporated city (how OSM means > it). We must be careful to tag in OSM with how OSM means things, mapping > our "real world" semantics onto OSM semantics. > > > Municipal boundaries might be somewhat relevant in determining if a > place is distinct (e.g. Vaughan is a city, not a suburb), but they are a > relatively minor factor. > > I don't know what this means exactly. Municipal boundaries ARE EXACTLY > relevant in determining if a place is distinct: they literally distinguish > it. In "real world speak" Vaughn might be called a suburb, but unless it > meets OSM's place=suburb definition, it shouldn't be tagged that way in > OSM. This isn't minor, it is "either correct or incorrect." > > > The main way that municipal names are mapped is through admin boundary > relations, not place nodes (although many municipalities have the same name > as their largest urban settlement, of course). > > Yes, this is true, although for many smaller human settlements (and some > larger ones), place nodes simply "will have to" suffice. > > > The way to distinguish between a place=city, place=town, and > place=village is population size, with nearby places shading things a bit > (so a smaller population size qualifies for a place=town in Northern > Ontario). Very roughly, a city has population >50k, a town has population > 5k-50k, and a village is <5k. > > OSM's place wiki notes that a village is more like "200 to town size" so > that 5k edge is fuzzy. The USA admin_level wiki documents some "rules of > thumb" here, but, yes, these can be rough, and are sometimes "stretched" > (or "shaded" as you say) a bit so that wide-zoom views of very rural areas > (e.g. northern Ontario) show settlements a bit more clearly. > > > There seems to be a persistent mis-understanding of this scheme, where > various editors (mainly @OntarioEditor and various other accounts > controlled by them) believe that place=city/town/village are for > municipalities, whether or not the municipality has one major urban > settlement with the same name as the municipality or not. They are also > tagging all unincorporated places in a municipality as place=suburb, > regardless of size or distinctness. Finally, they are using the official > title of the municipality to determine if it is a city/town/village, > whether than using population size. This can lead to very misleading > results, as Ontario municipalities called towns range in size from 313 to > 195k, and Ontario municipalities called cities range in size from 8k to > 2.7M. Quebec “ville”s (which means town or city) range in size from 5 to > 1.6M. > > > > To give an example, consider Minto ( > https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/7486154) in southwest Ontario. It > has two distinct population centres, Harriston and Palmerston. In the OSM > scheme, both are tagged as place=town, and the municipality name Minto > (since it does not correspond to a distinct urban settlement) does not get > a place tag (except perhaps as a place=municipality at the municipal > offices). The mistaken scheme is to tag Harriston and Palmerston as > place=suburb, and create a place=town node for Minto. > > In addition to me posting this, I'd simply say "read existing wiki > documentation," as well as "keep talking about it" (whether in private > emails, the Discussion tab on appropriate wiki, sometimes known as "a Talk > page") or here in talk-ca. It is best to stick to established OSM tenets > as documented, though some flexibility for "how we wish to or must do > things here" more-or-less can't be helped, so aim for the nice balance > between those. > > SteveA > California
_______________________________________________ Talk-ca mailing list Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
