[Routing] "correct" tagging of city/country/suburb/zip-code Was: No tags like "country" and "city" in planet.osm for ways?

[Jon Bright]

Hi,

Marcus Wolschon wrote:
> 
> Well, the "correct" solution that also answers if a street is
> NOT contained in a city would be so use the existing
> place-tags on a polygon marking the actual
> city/suburb/zip-code/state-limits.

Sure, this would be ideal.  I think it'll be a while before we get to 
that richness of data everywhere, though.  So a pragmatic solution for 
the current state of affairs is taking proximity of a street to a named 
place.  Incidentally, this is certainly the way that I've seen various 
navigation systems implement this.

> This is also MUCH less work then using is_in and much less error-prone.

I don't believe David Earl's name finder uses is_in at all, just 
proximity of places.  I personally don't ever add is_in tags to stuff 
that I map as I regard it as an entirely broken concept.

-- 
Jon Bright
Silicon Circus Ltd.
http://www.siliconcircus.com