[Imports] Queens, NYC addresses (was: United States Poultry Import)

[Kevin Kenny]

On Thu, Apr 28, 2022 at 2:40 AM Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com>
wrote:

> a ZIP code is a ZIP code, just this, a code for postal purposes, it has no
> reflection on the ground. It may be the same within an area, or in disjoint
> areas, or scattered points, etc.
>

Envelope addresses in the US are expected to have a city name that matches
one of the permissible communities of the ZIP code.  The fact that it
doesn't necessarily line up with a municipality does cause confusion[1],
but it's what we have. (Yes, I know that there are special ZIP codes that
don't have associated places - I've sent mail to APO/FPO addresses,
diplomatic pouches, and other unusual delivery endpoints, but they're the
exception, not the rule.)

'Queens, New York' is an acceptable 'postal city' for only ZIP codes 11427,
11428 and 11429.  It is _not_ an acceptable postal city for any of the
other ZIP codes in the Borough of Queens. It's important that 11101 would
be addressed 'Astoria', or 11691 would be addressed as 'Far Rockaway'.

The postal cities are one of the remnants of the towns and villages that
existed in Queens County prior to the formation of the City of Greater New
York in the Great Consolidation of 1898.  They are no longer administrative
entities (Neither the 'community boards' nor the 'council districts' follow
the old town and village lines) but continue to have strong local
identities even today; virtually everyone in Queens can name the former
village that they live in, partly because it's still the name of their
postal city.

'New York, NY' and 'Queens, NY' are likely to be misrouted if the ZIP code
becomes illegible for some reason, or if a non-USPS carrier uses postal
city as part of its geocoding. The street address may not be enough to
disambiguate. Even in Queens, the Rockaway Peninsula has numbered streets
on a different system from the rest of the borough.

I'm all for having addr:city designate the postal city - which, for any
given street address, is NOTinformation that can be deduced from anything
else in OSM.

I already made some pretty massive changes to building addresses (all of
which were born in imports, so I didn't worry about undoing the work of
field mappers) in Nassau and Suffolk Counties to comport with this rule.
For instance, addr:city now says 'Northport' instead of 'Asharoken' or
'Eatons Neck', or 'Southampton' in place of 'North Sea'. These changes were
announced on talk-us-newyork, imports-us, and talk-us, and on the
appropriate Slack channels, and nobody objected at the time. They were
combined with many other changes to building addresses, because the
original import had damaged other fields of the address as well. I didn't
touch New York City addresses, because the bad import had not included them.

Locally to me, I've done a little bit of fudging of addr:city, replacing
'Schenectady' with 'Niskayuna' in ZIP code 12309 - but only for addresses
within the township.  (I plan to do the same thing with Scotia and a few
others, but haven't got around to it yet.)  Those are listed by the postal
service as acceptable aliases (unlike the ones that I replaced on Long
Island), and the residents of those communities strongly prefer to use
their localities: Scotia or Niskayuna in preference to Schenectady, Rexford
in preference to Clifton Park, and so on.

73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin

[1] I have a lot of local knowledge about Queens addresses.

I grew up in the unincorporated community of Inwood, Town of Hempstead,
Nassau County. The mailing address of the house was in 'Far Rockaway, NY,
11696' owing to the vagaries of Post Office delivery routes.  Because it
was a 'New York City ZIP code' (you're right, ZIP codes are NOT tied to
political boundaries - but even Americans don't know that!), my family had
continual problems. For example, there were several years in which New York
City came after me for NYC income tax - which I did not owe, since I didn't
live in New York City, despite the ZIP code.  In the year that I moved from
New York to Arizona, I just wound up paying it, because in order to dispute
it, I'd have had to appear in person or pay a lawyer to appear on my
behalf. The disputed amount was less than the price of a plane ticket and
hotel room, to say nothing of legal counsel.

Eventually, after a couple of decades of pleading by the local politicians,
the Postal Service relented and assigned a new ZIP code of  'Inwood, New
York 11096', finally laying to rest the idea that Inwood was in New York
City. (Citation:
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/26/nyregion/our-towns-in-inwood-it-began-with-a-slip-of-the-zip.html
[New York Times paywall])

The problem was complicated by the fact that there was another post office
in New York City that had an acceptable alias of 'Inwood, NY 10034' (the
preferred address was 'New York, NY 10034') in the Inwood neighbourhood of
uptown Manhattan.  To this day, the Postal Service permits, 'Inwood, L.I.
NY" ("L.I." == Long Island), because that's an additional disambiguation.

New York has not been very good at having unambiguous toponyms. We have two
Floridas, two Woodburys, two Middletowns, and so on. The town of Nassau and
the county of Nassau are nowhere near one another.
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