[Talk-us] Correct source for population=* tags on US metropolitan cities

[Clifford Snow]

On Sat, Jan 9, 2021 at 2:48 PM Joseph Eisenberg <joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Proposal:
> Use the census data on Urbanized Areas to set the "population=" value for
> "place=city" nodes, rather than using the whole metro population or just
> the population of the central municipality.
>
> Rationale:
> The tag "population=*" is helpful as a way to distinguish small place=city
> features (which might have less than 50,000 people in rural States) from
> huge cities. Many database users depend on this information for rendering
> decisions at low zoom levels (large scales) and as a general estimation of
> the "importance" of a place.
>
> However, currently most population figures are taken from the population
> in the municipal boundaries, since this is often what is on local signs and
> easily available from the census. While this is fine for towns and small
> cities which are contained in one municipality, it often misses
> unincorporated urban areas next to the city limits, and for large cities it
> badly underestimates the population of the area which is considered part of
> the "place".
>
> For example, many people in West Hollywood or East Los Angeles would
> consider that they live in the larger place "Los Angeles", even though they
> live in a different municipality or an unincorporated area. Someone who
> lives in Vancouver, Washington will often tell people they live "In
> Portland" when talking to someone from outside of the region, since it
> functions as a suburb of the Portland, Oregon metro area.
>
> For the sake of clarity in the case of Portland, OR with a proposed
population of  2,072,553. What would Vancouver show?

Best,
Clifford

-- 
@osm_washington
www.snowandsnow.us
OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
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