I have long been on the fence about boundaries in OSM, and while I don't feel as strongly about it any longer, it still feels wrong to make this sweeping exception to one of the fundamental conventions of OSM mapping: verifiability. For many types of land use, anyone would be able to verify boundaries on the ground: a forest, a corn field, even a retail zone in most cases. But administrative boundaries can only be observed in a limited number of places: wherever there is a sign or a physical boundary in place, and rare other cases. More importantly though, there is an authoritative source for official administrative boundaries that can be easily accessed by anyone: TIGER[1]
All of this has little to do with neighborhoods, which are mostly (?) vernacular in naming and delineation, and even when there are official neighborhood designations, in my own experience they do not always match the vernacular names. I support point mapping of vernacular neighborhoods. If you really want to have shapes for vernacular neighborhoods, you can look at the now-ancient-but-still-cool flickr Alpha Shapes[2], last updated in 2011 but still available for download[3]. But please don't upload 'em to OSM :) [1] https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger-cart-boundary.html [2] http://code.flickr.net/2008/10/30/the-shape-of-alpha/ [3] http://code.flickr.net/2011/01/08/flickr-shapefiles-public-dataset-2-0/ Martijn van Exel Secretary, US Chapter OpenStreetMap http://openstreetmap.us/ http://osm.org/ skype: mvexel On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 11:39 AM, Clifford Snow <cliff...@snowandsnow.us> wrote: > > On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 10:29 AM, Bryce Nesbitt <bry...@obviously.com> > wrote: > >> The nice thing about mapping a "neighborhood name" as a point feature is: >> >> a) It helps people locate the neighborhood >> b) it completely sidesteps the question of the exact, possibly fuzzy, >> boundaries. >> >> For 10% of the hassle you map 90% of the benefit. > > > Except when it reports you are in a different neighborhood than you > actually are. When neighborhoods are not clearly defined then yes, a point > is the "best" choice. But when neighborhoods have defined boundaries then > they should be added. Just going up the admin level to city level, points > work until it says you are in a different city. We can not "see" city > boundaries but OSM has thousands of city boundaries. The simple solution is > if the neighborhood boundaries are clearly defined they belong in OSM as > polygons. If neighborhood boundaries are not clearly defined then they > should be represented by points. > > For the supporters of no admin boundaries in OSM, build the case on the > mailing lists instead of just saying "there is a growing support" for no > boundaries. In some parts of the US there is a growing support that climate > change is a hoax. That doesn't make it true. Build a case for removing > admin boundaries (and please include landuse.) > > Ideally in the future we can have a fuzzy boundary. But until then I think > what I proposed is an acceptable solution. > > Clifford > > > -- > @osm_seattle > osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us > OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > >
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