[Imports] Vermont Town boundaries from VCGI

Andrew Guertin andrew.guertin at uvm.edu
Tue May 6 07:01:43 UTC 2014


On 05/05/2014 04:36 PM, Elliott Plack wrote:
> Andrew,
>
> I loaded your data into JOSM and its really something! Good work. I think
> if you poke around, you'll see that many of the place=* places have already
> been imported by the GNIS import. Most of them will be (perhaps
> incorrectly) place=hamlet, unless another editor upgraded them.
>
> For instance, the town of Northfield (where I briefly lived) has a node
> with the proper attributes: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/158851899

Yes, my original plan was to remove these nodes and put place=* on the 
boundary relations. After discussion on the list, I will instead leave 
these nodes untouched and not have place=* on the relations.

> Now, I just noticed in your data the names include the census place type,
> like Northfield *Village, *Barton *Village, *etc. I believe those are place
> types and not the actual administrative name. in the census data, they
> spell the types with lowercase to indicate this (I believe). Head to
> http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml and type in
> "Northfield vi" and you'll see what I mean. Perhaps you want to look into
> that.

For all of the ones I've checked, the legal name is actually "Village of 
____". See for example 
http://www.leg.state.vt.us/statutes/fullchapter.cfm?Title=24APPENDIX&Chapter=221

"The inhabitants of the Village of Essex Junction, within the corporate 
limits as now established, shall continue to be a municipal corporation 
by the name of the Village of Essex Junction."

On the other hand, the same applies to towns and cities:

"The inhabitants of the Town of Colchester, within the corporate limits 
now established, shall continue to be a municipal corporation by the 
name of the Town of Colchester."

...and that seems more appropriate for the official_name= tag.


So as for what to do with the name= tag, I think it needs to be decided 
on a case-by-case basis. And that's going to be hard.

In the data as provided by VCGI:
* All villages have the word "Village" appended, except for "South 
Ryegate Village Lighting District"
* All towns and cities have no words appended, except
** St. Albans City
** St. Albans Town
** Rutland City

Some of these obviously don't match to normal usage, like Derby Center: 
there is only one thing named Derby Center, the village so everyone just 
calls it "Derby Center". Some of them do seem to match to normal usage, 
like Groton Village: in the Groton Town Plan 
<http://www.grotonvt.com/Planning/Groton%20Town%20Plan%20Approved%20August%202009.pdf>, 
they use the term "Groton Village" several times.

Some are more nuanced, like St. Albans. The specifier is usually left 
off, but is used when needed. For Rutland, "Rutland" could refer to 
either, "Rutland Town" would be sometimes used, but "Rutland City" would 
never be used.

I'll think about what to do here, and I'm open to suggestions

--Andrew



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