[Talk-GB] Non-intuitive addresses

[Mark Goodge]

On 14/02/2022 12:13, Peter Neale wrote:
> As I see it, one problem with following the RM model of 
> "street:substreet" comes when the data consumer is unaware of the 
> "substreet" concept and ignores it.  This leads to 1 Rose Cottages, 
> Green Lane" (addr:housenumber=1; addr:substreet=Rose Cottages; 
> addr:street=Green Lane) being rendered (or used in another way) as 1 
> Green Lane, when there could well be a genuiine house at 1 Green Lane 
> further along.
> 
> So, notjhing is perfect, but I still think that Street / Parentstreet is 
> more useful.

Yes, I think this is pragmatic. And, again, it matches up with the way 
that most address databases work, where you simply have a list of

Address line 1
Address line 2
etc

and the most local part of the street address always goes in line 1 even 
if, in RM terms, it's a dependent throughfare (aka substreet). So I 
don't think we should get hung up on following RM's data structure, we 
just need to make sure that whatever structure we do use is flexible 
enough to cope with all the vagaries of postal addresses.

Mark