[Talk-GB] place=village/town/city

[Colin Smale]

On 2016-02-15 16:46, Lester Caine wrote:

> On 15/02/16 14:15, Colin Smale wrote: On 2016-02-15 13:42, Lester Caine wrote:
> 
> So Bath is also a
> city despite being below some arbitrary population limit. Bath has around 100k inhabitants, not exactly a hamlet... But it doesn't
> have a city council, only Charter Trustees.
 Bath has not lost it's city status, unlike Rochester, so the
designation
is correct. 

Absolutely, I was questioning the "arbitrary population limit", not the
city status. Sorry if I wasn't clear. 

> If we know the
> population then it should be recorded, or a link to some other database
> that can provide a current and possibly historic population record?
> There is a well-established key population=*
> : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:population
> 
> Populations change every day of course, so they are never entirely
> accurate. But the wiki describes also population:date and
> source:population which are important to put the number in the right
> context, as is putting the tag on the right geometrical object which
> really should be a polygon (so either admin boundaries or landuse or
> place) and not a node.

> There we will have to disagree ... In my book there should be a node for
> every place in the UK. And it's location should be suitable to the
> 'centre' of the place. Personally I use the geonames.com as a cross
> reference and the population figures there are an alternative. It may
> actually be useful to add the geomnames reference to OSM and then use
> the name transalations via that ... but for population we still need a
> more reliable source?

No harm in having a node as well, it's just that putting the population
on a node is ambiguous as to what is considered part of that place
whereas putting the population on a 2D object is unambiguous. 

In England "places" themselves don't have well-defined boundaries - only
admin areas, down to the level of parish/electoral wards (of which the
population is known, more-or-less). Unless the NLPG can help? But I
suspect they are more oriented towards postal addresses, which is a
whole different can of worms. 
  
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