[Talk-us] Hamlets!

[Phil! Gold]

* Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com> [2013-06-21 09:17 -0400]:
> During the TIGER import, small neighborhoods were imported as hamlets.

I tend to think of the GNIS "hamlets" as small
places-where-people-live.  Around my section of the Baltimore suburbs,
most of them are housing developments, apartment complexes, trailer
parks or similar.  Some, however, do correspond to things that people
would more readily describe as towns or suburbs.  (Interestingly, none
of Baltimore's neighborhoods shoed up in the GNIS import.  All of the
GNIS place=* nodes stop at the city line.)

For the most part, I retag these nodes as landuse=residential unless I
am reasonably certain they correspond to a larger place designation,
in which case I give them an appropriate place= value.  I have
something of an advantage based on my location, because nowhere in the
immediate Baltimore metropolitan region is there a place that would
qualify as a hamlet (because the suburbs are all wide-ranging enough
to be place=village or, in some cases, place=town).

Note that I usually leave the nodes tagged landuse=residential, unless
I'm in the mood for figuring out subdividion boundaries based on
subdivision plats.  I know that the landuse= tags make more sense on
areas than on nodes, but it seems more correct to me than leaving the
node tagged place=hamlet.

> I'm wondering what other people's experience with the hamlets are. Are
> they useful where you live? Are they nonsense (as they have been in
> NYC and DC)?

I don't think they're "nonsense".  I think most of them in my area
don't qualify for place= tagging, but most of them do correspond to
*something* that actually exists.  (Not all; if I can't match a node
to a place name or subdivision, I'll just delete it, but that's not
tremendously common in my experience..)

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