[Tagging] Proposal: expanded address tags for US

[Tobias Knerr]

On 18.11.2012 21:16, Steven Johnson wrote:
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/House_numbers/UnitedStates

I've looked through your slides and the proposal, but I do not yet
understand why this solution is necessary.

One of your examples is "6345 W. Euclid AV", which you would tag as

addr:housenumber = 6345
addr:dir_pre = W
addr:streetname = Euclid
addr:street_type = Avenue

To me, the straightforward solution would be:

addr:housenumber = 6345
addr:street = W. Euclid Avenue (maybe without the abbreviation)

You argue that addressing in the US is very different from the rest of
the world, and to some extent that's true. However, I'm not convinced
it's different enough to warrant fundamentally different tagging.

For example, words for street types do regularly appear in addresses
outside the US - in German we have words such as "Straße" (street),
"Weg" (~ way) or "Gasse" (~ alley). And it's common practice to put that
"street type" in both the name and the addr:street values along with the
more unique part of the name. This makes it reasonably easy for a
renderer that doesn't know anything about German street names to handle
the tag, but would still allow a more sophisticated renderer or search
engine to break the values apart and abbreviate them etc. where appropriate.

So which particular difference is it that makes the existing keys not
work for the US?

Tobias