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

Thu May 19 05:48:04 UTC 2022

Unfortunately I don't understand the proposal not speaking Japanese, so
I don't understand exactly what is exactly the base of the discussion.

But I agree that it can be very difficult to distinguish between the
"types of settlement". If you take a look at the wiki page for
place=city:
(https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:place%3Dcity#place=city_vs_place=town)
especially at the part explaining differences between town and city, you
see very clearly that this difference is only based on the historical
situation in England and the resulting differentiation in the language.

Even in Germany a few 100 km in the east these differences don't apply
any more. There is just one word "Stadt" in the language and you can't
differentiate that in language. In Germany the fact whether some place
is a "Stadt" is only based on the type of administration not by type of
settlement. In some areas it might be quite similar to England on others
not, the regional differences are very strong, which has historical
reasons as Germany as a state is very young, until the 19th century
there were only many small independent kingdoms, some free towns and so
on. (And you even can say that the actual Germany is as young as 32
years with different administrative strategies in the years before if
you look at the east and the west).

In traditional mapping here the discrimination was usually not in type
of settlement but only in number of inhabitants (resulting in size of
the node and text label) and administrative status (underlining oder no
underline).

I'm not sure whether the tagging in Germany follows the exact English
definition. The German Wiki for example tries to define the place tags
by number of inhabitants discrimination town ("Stadt/Kleinstadt" =
city/small city) vs. (city = "Hauptstadt/Großstadt" meaning capital/big
city) (>10000 inhabitants), and adds that in some areas town should be
used even for much smaller places depending on "significance".

My main point is to emphasize that in this global project we have to
keep in mind that in the interpretation of all tags are dependent on
language and cultural differences, and that a harmonization includes
accepting slight (or sometimes slightly more) differences in the usage
of some tags in different countries/areas. A strategy that is only based
on making taggings strictly equal is one way but may fail because the
rules may be not practical and understandable in some situations. The
other way round you would only have different local maps which can't
interoperate. The best way won't be found in these extremes but in
between. And if some tagging "breaks" software then it may also need a
look at the software that also can be changed. It may be dependent of
the single case which way has to be taken.

In this case I can't decide it.

(I apologize for the maybe too general and long statement...)

Sebastian

Am 18.05.22 um 18:36 schrieb 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
>
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