[talk-au] Suburbs: Nodes, Areas, or both?

[Michael Collinson]

Hi Dian,

I have an interested in mapping what I call, for want of better 
terminology, fuzzy names or sense-of-place and comment in that specific 
regard.

In summary: if the suburb has a defined boundary, use an area, if it 
doesn't use a node. I would certainly NOT however use both to represent 
the same suburb. From experience with Russian cities, that makes if very 
difficult to make maps without pre-processing OSM data to remove 
duplicates. For things like airports and islands where this often 
happens accidentality due to the evolution of the map or simple 
misunderstanding, I can and do remove the node and merge any extra info 
onto the area.

I would comment that from my understanding, Australian suburbs are 
somewhat unusual in often having defined admin/postal boundaries. A more 
common situation is a "sense of place" that can really only be mapped 
with a node. As an example, my UK home town has an area mapped as a 
suburb called the Weston Estate. In the 1930s(!) it was a defined new 
housing development. Everyone know where it is, north of the river and 
to the west of the road out of the valley. But does it include later 
development? Does it include the older houses and a couple of farms? 
Hard to say and who you talk to gets a slightly different answer. So 
dangerous to map an area because then the map is making the landscape. 
Perhaps this is the case with Gruyere? (I genuinely don't know).

If anyone has an interest in sense-of-place mapping, I've experimented 
with is_in:* tags to map physiological regions, often historic but still 
relevant or loosely geographic. The idea being to end up with a point 
cloud that can then be processed according to need.  I find that if you 
ask someone who lives there, "Are in X?", they can give a straight and 
usually consistent yes/no answer. But if you ask "And where does it 
end?", you'll get either a very vague answer or a look of panic. But I 
am wandering off topic, so will leave it there.

Mike

On 2021-11-05 04:15, Dian Ågesson wrote:
>
> Hey all,
>
> I would appreciate the thoughts of the community with regards to 
> suburb representations.
>
> In a recent change set 
> (https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/113355648) a node was 
> introduced for Gruyere. Gruyere is on the urban boundary, but is 
> technically in Metropolitan Melbourne. As such, it straddles the 
> border between what could be considered a bona fide suburb, and an 
> independent town.
>
> Mick has correctly pointed out that many of the other localities in 
> the area are represented by both an area and a node.
>
> Is this the way all suburbs should be represented? Or is it an 
> urban/rural distinction?
>
>
> Dian
>
>
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