[Tagging] landuse=residential and named residential areas which belong together (neighbourhoods/subdivisions?)

[Greg Troxel]

Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com> writes:

> 2011/8/31 Greg Troxel <gdt at ir.bbn.com>:
>>  place names, which have more or less indistinct boundaries.
>
> just because they have no legal status does not mean there aren't
> distinct limits. Usually / often there are. There can be natural
> limits (cliffs, rivers, lakes, woods, ...) and man_made limits (big
> streets and motorways, railways, ...), the limits might also be soft
> or social / cultural / ethnic / economic / structural / typological /
> historic, ...

all true, but I'm not sure it matters.

>> In my area, towns have boundaries, and there are village centers that
>> have names like "West Acton" which have as far as I know no actual
>> boundaries and no legal standing.
>
> Try to analyze it. Where might "West Acton" end? Maybe you can come to
> a conclusion, it might also remain unclear for the moment where
> exactly it ends (try to look for limits like the above examples) but
> it will be clear for some parts that they definitely do form a part of
> "West Acton".

The point is that there is no agreed-upon value, and it's of no
consequence anyway.  Different people can have different opinions, and
not be wrong - it's not (in general) possible to answer the question "am
I in West Acton right now".  I have always had the impression that for
osm 'boundary' was inappropriate for things like this.

Our current node-based place= tagging for things like this (from
"Populated Places" items in the Geographic Names Information System)
seems pretty sensible.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 194 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/attachments/20110831/af2b9d54/attachment-0001.pgp>