[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Proposed Japan tagging/Places

[gyotoku810]

This proposal is the result of many discussions in the Japanese 
community, but we were pleased to have an international perspective.
	
First of all, this proposal is an improvement of "Japan tagging" page ( 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Japan_tagging ) and 
place=quarter/neighbourhood are already documentated to represent 
administrative place names under municipalities.

These place names are already mapped as place=quarter/neighbourhood by 
import ( 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JA:MLIT_ISJ/import2019_outline ), 
but there were some ambiguity with which tag to use, =quarter or 
=neighbourhood. The main purpose of the proposal is to resolve this 
confusion.

On 2022/05/18 23:30, Sarah Hoffmann via Tagging wrote:
> On Wed, May 18, 2022 at 08:05:26PM +0900, gyotoku810 wrote:
>>> On 18 May 2022, at 09:00, Sarah Hoffmann via Tagging <tagging at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> My main question is: will the proposal only affect city areas or
>>> do you also plan to change tagging of place=town/village/hamlet
>>> in the countryside?
>>
>> This proposal affects all areas in Japan.
> 
> I find this problematic. The place=* tagging you
> currently have on https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Japan_tagging#Places
> works well enough for software that processes OSM data globally.
> Your new proposal will break software which is built according to the
> global definition.

Which of place=suburb/quarter/neighbourhood/borough/hamlet breaks global 
order you said? place=quarter/neighbourhood are already mapped as I 
mentioned above and the impact of the change is small.

> For example,
> place=suburb and place=neighbourhood are frequently used for parts of
> larger rural villages. Conversely, you find place=village sometimes to
> be used for parts of towns, when the town has historically developped
> out of a set of close villages.

Not at all for Japan. There are no place=suburb in villages and no 
place=village in towns in Japan (a village and a town are parallel). But 
I know such usage exists in the world.

> So there is a lot of freedom in the usage of the tags. Still, they
> should be used in a way that they reflect the settlement type, not the
> type of administration.

What is the meaning of "settlement type"? I need detailed explanation.

>> We understand that the current use of place=* tags in Japan deviates from
>> the Wiki description, but we think there is no other way to represent place
>> names under municipalities.
> 
> Yes, there is. If you feel you need a different tagging, then you need
> to invent your own Japan-specific tag. This can then be used in addition
> to the globally defined tag without breaking anything.

It is easy to invent new tags suitable for the Japanese place name 
system, but then the problem of place=* tags will not be resolved.

Using Japan-specific tags break softwares that work globally. So, the 
Japanese community has made proper use of existing place=* tags (The 
same can be said about highways). Just like you said:
> What normally happens is
> every country looks at their specific situation and creates a recommendation
> how to use the tags so that they come closest to the global defintion.
> There is a tag border_type: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:border_type
> This is used in some countries exactly for this purpose. The main
> place=* tag corresponds to the global definition. The border_type tag is
> then added to signal the administrative type of the place. Maybe this
> could work for Japan, too?

As for boundary=administrative, admin_level=* is working properly for 
Japan. The border_type is not necessarily needed. It has nothing to do 
with representing a place name as a node.

gyotoku810