[Talk-us] Towns as Areas or Points

[Alan Millar]

> On the other hand, Silver Spring is not locally ambiguous. You know
> when you're in it and when you're not, political boundries be darned.

> Is OSM a reflection of the political borders, or is it a reflection of
> the people?

Excellent question.  My goal as a mapper is to document and blend both
where possible, but being *useful* is the most important thing.  In my
opinion, the common-sense definition of "town" is more important than
the legal local government incorporation.  What "everybody knows"
locally is a major guideline for me.

In my area near Portland Oregon, we have some suburb cities like
Beaverton, Hillsboro, and Tigard.  Around here they are legally called a
city if they have an incorporated local government, whether they have
15000 residents or half a million residents.  Therefore the political
label isn't useful in OSM, at least not for the "place" tag.  We also
have unincorporated sections of the county like Aloha, which everyone
knows as a town here.  Sounds like your Silver Spring.  So the OSM
convention based on population size, rather than legal status, is much
more useful.

We also have well-known neighborhood areas, which may or may not line up
with city-defined neighborhood sections or housing tracts.  Many of them
got loaded in from GNIS.  Some are relevant today (perhaps with
adjustment for sizing or local significance) while others are obscure or
just plain unknown.  (The Census Bureau usually tries to make CDPs with
locally-sensible names, but sometimes their needs don't match everyone
else's.)  If I know they don't make sense, even if downgraded to hamlet,
I delete them.

With all this, I usually find that the place as a node is more
meaningful than boundary polygons.  Most people are going to be more
interested in where downtown Beaverton or Aloha are, than which tax lots
got annexed where.  If they match, great, but if not, the place point
gets the attention.

-  Alan