[Tagging] Proposed feature : World wide place=* standardisation only based on population

M∡rtin Koppenhoefer dieterdreist at gmail.com
Tue Jun 1 10:13:18 BST 2010


2010/5/28 sly (sylvain letuffe) <sylvain at letuffe.org>:
> First, I'm aware that full classification of every populated places is not
> possible world wide with one tag only, ...The problem I see with actual place usage is that it is not
> standardazided world wide ...


IMHO place is a rough estimate where in the local/regional/national
settlement hierarchy a place is located. This does not have to be
standardized worldwide (at least not with the same population
figures). Just add additional tags like population and ignore place if
you don't like it (or use it as fallback).


> It makes it quite hard for newcomers to guess in wich case they should use
> wich place, and that proposal tries to help have a first easy step to record
> at least a population estimation.


as others have pointed out: use est_population (or sth. similar, or
use population=x and source:population=estimated) for this scope. I
actually don't think it is hard for newcomers to choose the right tag
(they know in their local language if a place is a hamlet, village or
town). The main problem might be that current definitions of some
values are not corresponding to real world (hamlets are places with up
to 1000 inhabitants in OSM WIki but in the real world most places with
more than 100-200 inhabitants will be villages, hamlets with 999
inhabitant IMHO don't exist).

Also this classification (settlements) is usually (at least in the
regions I know) not done by mere population but by settlement
_structure and form_ and available facilities - at least to
differentiate between village and hamlet. Cities (at least in Europe)
are mostly historically cities, not by population, and it does make
sense to use this status, as it has influence on the structure of the
territory, while the importance deducted from population is highly
dependent on the context (density of the area, size of other
settlements nearby).

cheers,
Martin


I suggest reading of these articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_privileges
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_status_in_the_United_Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_town_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_status_in_Sweden

If you can read German I also suggest this one, which is not
comparable to the English version:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadt

And for the intensely interested an IMHO very interesting (standard) book:
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL4622521M/Storia_della_citta%CC%80
(Italian Version, Original)
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL2291022W/Histoire_de_la_ville (French
Version? Has only half the pages)
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL4436809M/history_of_the_city   (English Version)




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