[OSM-talk-be] place=city, place=town

[Ben Laenen]

Kurt Roeckx wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 04:58:14PM +0200, Mathias Versichele wrote:
> > Am I the only one that thinks it's a little 'artificial' to base the
> > difference between a 'place=city' and 'place=town' on the population
> > (>100.000 and <100.000 resp.) ? Right now a lot of cities (one example:
> > Dendermonde) are tagged as towns, which doesn't combine well with the
> > administrative reality...
>
> The problem with using population to base that on is Brussels
> has 145K and that Schaarbeek has 113K.  And you don't want
> Schaarbeek to be shown as big as Brussels.

I agree the current rules aren't perfect, but no-one comes up with something 
better either. Btw, the rules are already bent a little concerning distinction 
between town and city for example. There are several places tagged as city in 
Belgium already which aren't really city according to the >100000 rule. So 
likewise it's bent a little bit as well when it concerns Brussels and 
Schaarbeek.

The rules aren't written in stone. They work good in most cases, and needs a 
bit of manual adjustment in those few situations. Making rules for the place 
tag as it is defined in OSM which would fit for every place is impossible in 
my opinion.

> For population lists see:
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_Belgische_gemeenten_naar_inwonertal
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_Belgische_steden_(naar_inwoneraantal
>)

This list is better: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_steden_in_België

> There doesn't seem to be a French or English page that has the
> same info.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville_de_Belgique

Ben