[OSM-talk] Big towns, small cities

[Tom Chance]

Ahoy,

Looking at the slippy map, the choice of city names appearing at higher
zoom levels isn't very useful. It would be better to either show big
settlements, or a hand-selected list at each zoom level.

The problem is obviously that the slippy map shows cities first, then
cities and towns, etc. But how we classify 'city' in OSM is currently an
open question:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Talk:Key:place

In the UK it would surely make sense to know official classifications,
based upon arcane rules and more recent central government decisions. But
for the purposes of most maps (for example) Reading (a town with pop
~232k) should be considered "city-sized" whereas St Albans (a city with
pop ~80k) shouldn't. It would also be helpful to have a way of marking
metropolis cities like London, Manchester, etc. that should appear on zoom
levels where Reading, Milton Keynes and others shouldn't.

There is a proposal for a population key:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Population

What do people think about:
- Basing place values on official classifications or an arbitrary scheme
we come up with.
- Deciding which settlements to show at different levels.

Regards,
Tom