[Talk-GB] UK cities

[Ed Loach]

Ed Avis wrote:

> So in the long term the answer may be to stop rendering and
> address
> lookup and other applications from using the place=city nodes at
> all,
> but have them work based on areas.  Then the ambiguous place
> nodes can
> eventually disappear.

Ah! This reminded me about a recent change which might not yet be
deployed:
http://trac.openstreetmap.org/changeset/26883
Once deployed, place names on area ways will no longer render, so
the place node is more of a hint to renderers (as it is probably
used at present in many cases). However, we could put the correct
town or city place tag and name on the area way(s)/relation so that
the query to get UK cities can be done on ways/relations rather than
nodes, and perhaps even ordered by area.

I still feeling mis-tagging something as a city when it is a town or
vice versa is a bit wrong, but I won't "fix" anything at the moment.

As others have said, finding the limits where to place those ways
isn't always obvious unfortunately. But they exist, somewhere; my
stepfather-in-law is a parish councillor and has diagrams showing
the "village envelope" which is considered when looking at planning
proposals. This area is much smaller than the parish of the same
name. In the case of that village I can pretty much approximate it
by using bing to trace the existing developed area.

Ed