[Tagging] RFC: place=quarter, Parts of settlements, proposed hierarchy: suburb -> quarter -> neighbourhood

Nathan Edgars II neroute2 at gmail.com
Tue Sep 27 18:44:12 BST 2011


On 9/27/2011 12:40 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:
> After more discussions on the German ML it looks as if one subdivision
> for suburbs (the proposed neighbourhood) was not enough, so we
> invented another level in the hierarchy of settlement parts. As the
> name for these parts as well as the structure depends heavily on local
> history, tradition and culture it is somehow impossible to find a term
> which fits (by its linguistic definition) into all needs. The proposed
> value is "quarter" for the "place"-key. Keep in mind that also the
> value "suburb" can not (by its most common interpretation) be
> interpreted with common sense (you wouldn't call the city centre a
> "suburb" normally - at least not outside Australia).

There's a problem here: you're assuming that neighborhoods (and 
so-called quarters) are well-defined. While sometimes they are, it's 
very common to have neighborhoods that overlap partially or fully. This 
means that there's no real hierarchy of neighborhoods.

For example, in New York City, there are five well-defined boroughs 
(which coincide with counties, a sub-state-level division). Presumably 
these would be your "quarters". Manhattan, one of these boroughs, is 
roughly divided into Lower, Midtown, and Upper Manhattan. But Upper 
Manhattan itself has sub-neighborhoods including Harlem and Inwood, and 
those have their own divisions such as Spanish Harlem.



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