[Talk-us] Place classifications

Minh Nguyen minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us
Wed Jan 14 09:44:59 UTC 2015


On 2015-01-13 05:28, Minh Nguyen wrote:
> On 2015-01-12 11:23, Elliott Plack wrote:
>> Great start on this Minh,
>>
>> I tried to tackle this in the Baltimore Washington region last year.
>> After reading the wiki, I decided on the following classifications:
>>
>> * hamlet: census population was less than 200
>> * village: census pop. between 200 and 10000
>> * town: census pop. between 10001 and 50000
>> * city: major hub urban centers above 50000
>
> I like the idea of lowering the bar for place=city somewhat, to rope in
> smaller cities that have their own suburbs as part of a "micropolitan
> area". However, if we just go by population, the map ends still ends up
> rather sparse, making OSM look undermapped.
>
> Most rural counties have a center of commercial activity, often the
> county seat (or a former county seat). Even though its population may
> not reach 10,000, it's significant enough to be labeled at the same zoom
> levels as those that do. For example, I made an exception for Hillsboro,
> OH. [1] Nowhere else in the county comes close to its population of
> 6,605. As a county seat, it has its own daily newspaper, radio station,
> fairgrounds, general aviation airport, high school, and two U.S.
> highways. I cite attributes like these in the changeset comment or note
> tag whenever making an exception.
>
> [1] http://osm.org/relation/183049
>
>> There are some CDPs though that would be a city by population alone, but
>> really don't have a true city feel, and cartographically would look bad
>> as being a city on a map. The tricky one is Glen Burnie, sprawl area
>> south of Baltimore with no urban core, yet the pop is over 65k. It is
>> marked as a city now, but really should be town I think. I like your one
>> city per metropolis idea.
>
> In suburban areas, even a city in the official sense may lack a downtown
> core. But yes, if you'd consider Glen Burnie to be subordinate to
> Baltimore, place=city is probably too prominent. You wouldn't consider
> any town to be a suburb of Glen Burnie.
>
> The unincorporated places I referred to the other day are different than
> CDPs. They came from the GNIS database and likely originated as
> century-ago post offices, cemeteries, or railroad stops. Wikipedia and
> the Census Bureau are mum on most of these places, but it's entirely
> possible that they're marked on the ground with signs. I haven't heard
> back from the mapper who made them into towns, but I'd like to revert
> their changes soon.

Fortunately it was just a misunderstanding. They explained that 
place=hamlet appeared wrong, since no one uses the word "hamlet" in this 
part of the country. They're using mostly Potlatch 2 and JOSM. P2's 
basic mode does have human-friendly preset names, but none of the 
popular editors attempts to bridge this particular Britishism/New-Yorkism.

Though some of these POIs look so obscure they might not even qualify 
for place=isolated_dwelling...

-- 
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us




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