[Talk-us] Bay Area trailer parks: "hamlet" ? Also neighborhoods & cities

[David Carmean]

On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 12:13:43PM -0800, Michal Migurski wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> There are a large number of mobile home / trailer parks mapped in San  
> Jose, Santa Clara, and other parts of the South Bay. They're tagged  
> place=hamlet, and I'm wondering if there's a better way to identify  
> them? Beej71, if you're on this list I think a lot of these came from  
> you.

[snip]

What we're looking at appears to be the result of a mass import of US
Board on Geographic Names GNIS data. This data has only one feature class
for populated places, Populated Place.  (Interestingly, I see that some
trailer parks are listed as Locales, which is supposed to be a place
without a permanent human population.)

The feature classes are listed here:  
    http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/feature_class.htm

I can't find anything in the wiki/mailing list archives that Google 
searches about this GNIS import.

In my mind, "hamlet" describes a tiny populated place that is outside 
other city, town, or village boundaries.  I'd call a trailer park within 
a city a subdivision, where:

    State > County > Metro Area > City > District > Neighborhood > 
      Subdivision

On the other hand, a trailer park within a small town might very well 
constitute an entire Neighborhood.

I don't know how to reconcile this particular "L10n" with the needs of 
"i18n".