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

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

Am Do., 19. Mai 2022 um 07:51 Uhr schrieb Sebastian Gürtler <
sebastian.guertler at gmx.de>:

> 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.



not true, there is "Großstadt" and its definition in Germany is that of
place=city.



> In Germany the fact whether some place
> is a "Stadt" is only based on the type of administration not by type of
> settlement.



sorry, but no. A "Stadt" is functionally different from a "Dorf" (village)
and while we do not have a means to make distinctions between "Kleinstadt"
and "Mittelstadt" in osm (besides the "population" tag), we do make the
distinction between Stadt and Dorf based on functional differences. It is
true that what we consider "Stadt" is not only based on services and
functions but also on history, the term "Stadt" is a title a settlement can
get, and historically it meant some privileges (like having the right to
have a market and similar).



> 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.



it's not as if legislation started with the foundation of the German Reich
1871, or the German Confederation in 1815, there was some continuity also
in the times before, the pecularities of independent cities ("Freie Stadt"
and "Reichsstadt")  are dating back at least to the 13th century.



> (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).
>


cities do not change completely in a few years, what you can see today in
German as structure and system of towns and cities is the result of a very
long history, and depends much more on it as compared to the last 32 years
where development was relatively "stalled" (if you look at the situation of
the German cities 1990 and now, it is basically the same, in the grand
scheme). Yes, in the eastern part of Germany there were some significant
changes, but the basic structure is still the result of a much longer
development.



> 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).
>


usually, being a "Stadt" was a reason to be more prominently displayed than
a village, even if the village had slightly more inhabitants.



>
> 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.



yes, some criteria will have to be relative to the surrounding (e.g.
population) while others should be hard requirements (e.g. should provide a
minimum out of a selection of certain functions, e.g. education, commerce,
transportation, culture, administration, ...)



> 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.



it depends on _what_ is equal, _how_ the rules are set out. We should have
the same rules, but they should allow for flexible classification and be
universally applicable. For example, figures (thresholds) aren't likely to
be numerically the same in dense and low density areas.

Cheers,
Martin
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/attachments/20220519/23b11bb1/attachment-0001.htm>