[Talk-GB] Tagging post towns and other addressing issues in the UK

Sun Jan 27 23:05:40 UTC 2019

Hi Andrezej,

I would oppose addr:village for the Dependent Locality as it invites
incorrect usage. There is no reason to overload an existing tag with a
different meaning to its current usage. In the UK, a village is not
simply a neat subdivision of a town. I think addr:locality and
addr:sublocality would be better, as this would (correctly) imply a
possibly fuzzy boundary which possibly crosses formal admin boundaries. 

Regarding streets/thoroughfares, the main thoroughfare is addr:street -
that is clear and established usage. We are looking for a solution for a
"substreet" and moving the main thoroughfare up to "addr:parentstreet"
to make room for the dependent thoroughfare in "addr:street" feels wrong
as it gives addr:street different semantics under some conditions. Note
also that the word "thoroughfare" has probably been carefully chosen to
allow application to things other than simple streets with adresses
neatly on each side. I would also instinctively expect a campus to be
more of a locality (subarea of a Town) than a super-street. Maybe
someone with access to PAF data can see what data is in what fields for
some address on the CSP. 

It wouldn't surprise me if subbuildings were used for "Unit 1",
"Building A" etc. That doesn't sound/feel at all unreasonable. 

On 2019-01-27 23:27, Andrzej wrote:

> Hi Colin,
> 
> This is broadly in line with Robert's proposals. However, it raises questions about:
> 
> 1. tagging "dependent localities" - they can be towns or villages. Are you happy with addr:town, addr:village for this purpose? Reaching consensus on that would be a major step forward. 
> 
> 2. Tagging "dependent throughfares". I think they could be used to tag "building name, Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge". This could be addr:place except in OSM addr:place should not be combined with addr:street. Or, like in Robert's proposal, addr:street+addr:parentstreet. Except that CSP is a campus, not a street. 
> 
> 3. Tagging subbuildings. Addr:unit is available but is fairly limited (unit names?) and vague. 
> 
> 4. PO Box - I haven't thought about it. Is that something that we would include at all in a geographical database? Perhaps if it is associated with a business that has a known location but uses PO Box as its address? 
> 
> Best wishes,
> Andrzej 
> 
> On 28 January 2019 05:21:36 GMT+08:00, Colin Smale <colin.smale at xs4all.nl> wrote: 
> 
> Assuming the post code is seen in OSM as a way of addressing post (as opposed to a geographic subdivision or an indication of location) then I suggest following Royal Mail's address structure, which can be seen in the description of the Postcode Address File on Wikipedia [1]. If we cannot map a full-format address onto OSM tags, we need a description of how to deal with this (i.e. which bits to leave out or combine). 
> 
> I have taken the table from wikipedia and added a column for the OSM tags where known. Most of these fields are actually optional, or not always present, depending on the exact address in question. 
> 
> How do we fill in the blanks? 
> 
> ELEMENT
> FIELD NAME
> DESCRIPTION
> MAX LENGTH
> OSM
> 
> Organisation
> Organisation Name
> 
> 60
> n/a
> 
> Department Name
> 
> 60
> n/a
> 
> Premises
> Sub Building Name
> 
> 30
> 
> Building Name
> 
> 50
> addr:housename
> 
> Building Number
> 
> 4
> addr:housenumber
> 
> Thoroughfare
> Dependent Thoroughfare Name
> 
> 60
> 
> Dependent Thoroughfare Descriptor
> 
> 20
> 
> Thoroughfare Name
> Street
> 60
> addr:street
> 
> Thoroughfare Descriptor
> 
> 20
> 
> Locality
> Double Dependent Locality
> Small villages
> 35
> 
> Dependent Locality
> 
> 35
> 
> Post town
> 
> 30
> addr:city
> 
> Postcode
> Postcode
> 
> 7
> addr:postcode
> 
> PO Box
> PO Box
> 
> 6
> 
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcode_Address_File 
> 
> On 2019-01-27 21:40, Andrzej wrote: 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> When working on post codes in East Anglia I realised the current address tagging scheme is insufficient for even fairly basic scenarios. I have already discussed the issues with some of the most experienced mappers and like to bring these issues to your attention. Robert has summarised his ideas in https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Rjw62/UK_Address_Mapping
> 
> The bottom line is, I would like to be tag commonly used addresses without losing information and without resorting to addr:full. 
> 
> Issues:
> 1. Post towns (most pressing one because there is a lot of confusion around it). The UK is fairly unique in that not every town is a post town. This makes it impossible to tag e.g. Station Road, Histon, Cambridge CB24 9LF. 
> Wiki recommends addr:city to be used for tagging post towns (Cambridge) but then how do we tag Histon? 
> - Robert recommends sticking to the current meaning of addr:city and using addr:town and addr:village for town and village names, which, although not in wiki, are already being used in the UK. I like this solution because it is very explicit in what each addr: key means and it doesn't redefine addr:city. 
> - SK53 prefers using addr:city for everything (towns, even villages) and either not tagging post towns (they can be seen as a an internal detail of a closed Royal Mail database) or using a new tag for it, like addr:post_town. It is a simple solution, results in Histon being called Histon and not Cambridge (without introducing new tags for town and village names) and is commonly used. It is also a bit confusing (what exactly is a city?) and I think we we should at least support tagging post towns. 
> 
> Key questions:
> a) addr:city for post towns or towns and villages? 
> b) how to rag remaining information (respectively, towns and villages or post towns,) 
> 
> 2. Tagging addresses within campuses, business parks etc. There is addr:place but it is supposed to be used instead of addr:street. Again, Robert has a fairly decent proposal for that using addr:place or addr:locality and addr:parentstreet. Please comment. 
> 
> 2a. should buildings in campuses be tagged with addr:buildingnumber/name or addr:unit? I would prefer buildingname/number (as they are often subdivided) but these seem to be associated with addr:street. 
> 
> 3. Similar to (2) but for buildings. Tagging buildings that have e.g. a single name but multiple house numbers? 
> 
> Best regards, 
> ndrw6
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

_______________________________________________
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/attachments/20190128/4800f6a2/attachment.html>