[Talk-us] US Addressing

[Richard Fairhurst]

On 29/11/2012 22:46, Jeffrey Ollie wrote:
> None of the Iowa data that I am processing originates with the US
> Census or TIGER.

Sure, I should have said "big massive ---k-off import" rather than 
"TIGER". They both look the same from several thousand miles away I'm 
afraid. :)

> As Richard Welty said, the addr:city tag is pretty much required, as
> US addresses aren't defined by the boundaries of the city you live in
> (or don't live in for rural addresses), but the post office that
> delivers your mail.
>
> I can see not including the country or the state, do the various
> routing/geocoding engines take advantage of state/country polygons?

I'm pretty sure they do. But regardless, the point is: they could. It's 
saner to fix (say) Nominatim than it is to import a really huge quantity 
of redundant data into OSM. If you're determined on doing this, then an 
extra few days to get it right won't hurt.

You could pretty easily, I think, generate automated post office 
boundary polygons from the source data, rather than settling for 
addr:city. If it takes a few extra hours of coding, it's worth it; it'd 
make it _much_ quicker and easier to add a new house in the future. (One 
less thing to mistype.)

Similarly, you might have to scratch your head a bit to write the code 
which expands "St Andrews St" into "St Andrews Street" and not "Street 
Andrews Street". But it's worth it. Because if you don't do it, the 50 
poor sods who write the turn-by-turn voiceover code are going to have 
to, every time they use your data.

The specifics of what you have to do aren't really my point. I don't 
know much about the US and even here in Britain I don't have any 
personal use for addressing, so you shouldn't listen to me on the 
specifics. What's important is that the ideas get waved around in front 
of lots of people - and ideally not just on the US list - so that the 
hive mind can get to work and achieve the best result possible.

cheers
Richard