[OSM-talk-be] Hi all

[Ben Laenen]

Kenny Knecht wrote:
> We must also think about the nomenclature
> If you look at
>  http://tagwatch.stoecker.eu/Belgium/En/keystats_place.htmlyou see that
>  there are 321 towns and 1642 villages. There are even 14
> cities, which means according to
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:place  +100000 inhabitants!
> Personally I would ignore that guideline completely because it is solely
> based on # of inhabitants. As is clearly explained in
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_of_Belgium,
> municipalities and sub-municipalities reflect the Belgian state structure
> more closely. We could of course map city to muns > 100000, towns to other
> muns and villages to sub-muns, but that will not be true always (i.e.
> Herstappe is a mun with 84 inhabitants!)
> But that is my opinion: this issue is certainly open to discussion.
> 
> That way I hope to get the place-key curated soon. If you have any remarks
> about methodology or sources, please feel free to email. Is there a server
>  I can put files, programs and such on? That way discussion might be more
>  concrete...


Place tags have been discussed in the past, and since this tag is 
internationally used with population in mind (however bad that may be) we're 
stuck with that. We just have to give it a meaning that gives an idea about 
the population of the place.


So, the consensus in Belgium is more or less:

For municipalities: add a place=* node with the municipality's name:
* > 100000 inhabitants: place=city (although, in practice this apparently is 
more like 50000)
* 10000 - 100000: place=town
* < 10000: place=village

Then they all have "sub-municipalities":
* ignore the sub-municipality with the same name as the municipality
* for all other ones:
** > 10000 inhabitants: place=town
** < 10000: place=village

Then there may be small places or quarters in each sub-municipality. These get 
a place=hamlet

Areas of land that got a name which isn't related to population (like several 
fields in the countryside that are known by a specific name) get a 
place=locality

place=suburb should not be used, this tag doesn't fit in Belgium.

Well, I basically just said what's on this page 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Belgium/Conventions/Places
There are a few examples there as well.

Not the entire country has been tagged like that. Probably many people who 
mapped a place didn't know about these rules anyway and were only reading the 
English description. So yes, we should revisit the nodes with a place tag 
once.

Greetings
Ben