[Talk-GB] OSM UK address project: tags

[Mark Goodge]

On 22/12/2021 14:46, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 22.12.21 14:20, Mark Goodge wrote:
>> For example, as a data consumer, suppose I wanted to extract a list of
>> all the pubs in Stoke-on-Trent. The most obvious way of doing that is to
>> look for everything that's tagged as amenity=pub and
>> addr:city=Stoke-on-Trent.
> 
> That is indeed the most obvious way but it is also not recommended; not
> a week goes by without some poor OSM newbie hoping that they could just
> extract atomic OSM information like that without having to apply any
> geography operations.
> 
> The recommended way is to find the administrative boundary for
> Stoke-on-Trent (or whichever area you are interested in), and then find
> all amenity=pub objects (which may or may not have address tags - they
> might not have one because the address is not mapped, or because they
> are situated in a larger building and only the building has been given
> an address, or whatever) in that polygon.

But then you run into the opposite problem, which is that administrative 
areas don't necessarily match urban areas or people's perception of 
geography. Does Manchester include Salford, for example, and does 
Birmingham include Solihull?

The reality is that there is no simple, single definitive means of 
categorising addresses that works for everybody. So we have to 
compromise, somewhere. But the most appropriate compromise is to follow 
local conventions as far as possible, rather than shoehorn everything 
into a one-size-fits-all solution.

Mark