[Geocoding] Issue with nominatim in Alameda County California (Berkeley/Oakland)

[Sarah Hoffmann]

Hi David,

On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 03:15:48PM -0700, David Chiles wrote:
> I was using the reverse geocoding api to lookup city and streets. It seems
> no matter where in Alameda County I query it returns Alameda as both the
> county and city.
> 
> For example in Downtown Berkeley:
> http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/reverse?format=json&lat=37.87173&lon=-122.26842&zoom=18&addressdetails=1
> 
> In Downtwon Oakland:
> http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/reverse?format=json&lat=37.80408&lon=-122.27028&zoom=18&addressdetails=1
> 
> And it seems to work fine in a county and town just to the east:
> http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/reverse?format=json&lat=37.87674&lon=-122.17861&zoom=18&addressdetails=1
> 
> I don't know where the problem lies. I couldn't find a problem with the OSM
> relations

Nominatim gets confused by the tiger:county tag on the streets in the area.
It ends up prefering anything called Alameda in the address. Ultimately
that is a fault with Nominatim but not one that can be easily fixed.

You can work around this bug by changing the city boundaries of Alameda
from a way to a boundary relation and adding the Alameda place node as
a label member to that relation. Then it will be automatically taken
out of the addresses.

Boundary-Way: http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/33083805
Place-Node: http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/150942648


Sarah