[Talk-us] [Tagging] how to tag US townships?

[Brad Neuhauser]

Aren't admin_level and place getting at slightly different things?
 admin_level is to mark official political/legal boundaries.  place is to
mark a...well...place that has a name, and the
place=city|town|village|hamlet does not necessarily align with the type of
government (if any) of the place.  From the place page:
"In most Western countries, the status of a location (whether it is a
city/town/etc.), is decided by the government, and is not a function of
size. ***But most OSM communities of those countries have made a convention
to use the population to decide which place tag to use, to ensure a more
common way of tagging across the globe, and not to end up with cities of
1000 residents for example.***"  Just like the term "township" that Ant
linked to, the same word can have different meanings in different contexts.

Brad

On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 7:54 PM, Antony Pegg <antthelimey at gmail.com> wrote:

> ok, I got a question
>
> tagging admin area / populated centers / labels in USA seems to come down
> to two main tags:
>
> admin_level and place
>
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Admin_level#10_admin_level_values_for_specific_countries
> plus
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Place
>
>
> I've ran into a problem recently fixing up my area, where either the TIGER
> import, or inexperienced contributors have/are mis-tagging townships as
> being, in some way, more important / more visible than Cities or Towns.
>
> Before I go further, If you aren't sure exactly what a Township is in the
> US, please read this first:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township_%28United_States%29
>
> In rural PA (Lancaster) I am specifically dealing with a buttload of these:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township_%28United_States%29#Civil_townships
>
> From personal experience, the best I can equate them to is neighbourhoods
> or in-town areas in england.
>
> West Lampeter is to Lancaster as Tarpots is 918 years ago) to South
> Benfleet, or the Sea-front in Southend.
>
> The problem is that currently we dont have a discrete tag for
> place=township and all admin_level= are =8
>
> so, half a question, half a statement of intent, unless someone argues me
> down from the ledge...
>
> I'm going to start using place=suburb for townships as the closest
> comparison I can find
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:place%3Dsuburb
>
>
> thx
> Ant
>
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>
>
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