[Talk-GB] UK street addressing

[James Derrick]

Hi,

On 20/12/2020 15:50, Alan Mackie wrote:
> I'm also unclear how to tag numbered houses in named terraces.
> addr:housename doesn't seem appropriate if they are shared along an 
> entire row and addr:street already has a value.

In NE England there are a number of 1850ish - 1900ish terraces where the 
terrace is named, rather than the surrounding highway.

This caused me a lot of confusion when starting out cycle surveying and 
mapping as what street signs there were, conflicted. :-)

A good indication of such a situation up here is a battered enamel tin 
plate (dark blue rusty) or cast iron (just rusty) name plate on the 
terrace - original, and probably installed when the highway was 
compacted earth!

I just add `name`="Fourth Row" to the `building=terrace` for simplicity, 
although duplicating with `addr:housename` also seems OK.

These days, I also use the JOSM terracer to break terraces into 
dwellings - survey, count the chimneys, or check the high-res Bing back 
garden fence imagery.


> I've also run into this for blocks of flats. "Block B" doesn't seem 
> like a housename either? The addr:block tags seems to be for named 
> city blocks.
>
> Do we have some sort of local grouping tag?

There's a few options mentioned in 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:addr (which is probably the 
issue here - the lowest common denominator across cultures will always 
give confusion!).

I've used `addr:unit` for commercial premises (like 1A, 1B, 2, etc for 
shops) but `addr:block` seems to be for a very different use case (grid 
iron city blocks - Fifteenth and...).

The simple `name` or `addr:housename` tag kind of fits the hierarchy, so 
KISS?

Happy Mapping,


James
-- 
James Derrick
     lists at jamesderrick.org, Cramlington, England
     I wouldn't be a volunteer if you paid me...
     https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/James%20Derrick