[Talk-us] LAST CALL - Retagging of place nodes in NewYork State

[Greg Troxel]

Stepping way back...


I see a difference between

  the hierarchy of administrative divisions

  populated places


The first has administrative boundaries and levels, and governments.
People are mostly talking about that.


I think place=hamlet is totally different; it's about an identifiable
sort of center of mass of where people live.  It is not necessarily
related to government.

Around me, "Acton" is a town, with a town hall, a government, and
distinct boundaries.  One can certainly place a node "Acton" that might
be place=town, or might be admin_centre of the boundary=administrative
admin_level=8 polygon.  There's an obvious place to put it; it's both
the town hall and the common from the old town with a war memorial.  So
far this is easy.

There are also places we might in en_US call villages, with names "West
Acton", "South Acton", "North Acton", and, far less clearly known by
locals, "East Acton".  These are -- very much more or less -- places
with a greater density of old buildings at a crossroads, and perhaps a
church.   Some of them function as town centers in the "go there to eat
or shop" sense.   None of them have any government whatsoever.  But
people will say to other locals "I live in West Acton".

These places however do not have boundaries.  At the crossroads with the
church, you are definitely in West Acton.  As you leave in any of the
directions, you reach a point where you have passed the last notable
thing and density falls off.  In that sense you are no longer "in West
Acton".  But as you go east, until you get "in South Acton" you are sort
of in neither, and some people would probably treat them as tiled (with
"Acton Center").


I see place= as tagging the rough location of these named settlements
which are distinct from government, even though often they line up
exactly, not really by accident.

It gets really hard to talk about the population of a place without a
boundary.

And, these are sort of hierarchical, where place=town name=Acton is
really located at "Acton Center" but denotes the whole town's
population.   Then place=village name="West Acton" makes sense, but the
population of West Acton is also in the town of Acton.


Then, there is place=locality for locations known by names but not
because people live there.   A Mass example is "Tracy's Corner", a
crossroads with a famous gas station.


I think in general we in OSM haven't bitten this off hard and dealt with
it; it's messy and requires better formal geography knownledge than I
have so far.  I have personally not dug in because MA ended up with
defined-boundary towns around the places that are town centers in the
populated places sense, plus lower-level villages that place=village or
place=hamlet, based on population serve well.
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