[OSM-talk] Place: city,town,village,hamlet,suburb

[Mike Collinson]

In general, there are a number of instances in 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Map_Features where there 
are/were descriptions that read as definitions but IMHO are really 
just guidelines and should as we get more precise be edited to reflect that.

Someone has changed these definitions to base it on population fairly 
recently (3 months?).  I'm fairly OK with the a city definition of 
over 100,000, it seems pretty standard worldwide - though I recognize 
that this may conflict with a local government type.  I take issuance 
though with dividing town and villages on a precise population - that 
should be a local cultural decision.  In Australia, I recently mapped 
the largest town for miles around - definitely known as a town, but 
with a population of 9,000.

Perhaps this wording would be better:

village - "Smaller than a town. For example: having a particular 
local government type, below 10,000 people or providing less services 
(depends on country)."

:-)  or perhaps this old Irish definition might be better.

Hamlet:  Two houses
Village:   Two houses and a pub
Town:     Two houses, two pubs and a church

Mike
Manila


At 08:17 AM 3/01/2007, Alex Mauer wrote:
>The other day I was considering making an attempt at entering the
>borders of my city, and referenced the page:
>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Map_Features#Places
>The comments for place=town,village,hamlet,suburb caught me off guard,
>because they include population as part of the apparent definition of
>those places.
>
>After some discussion on IRC, the conclusion I arrived at was that the
>US and the UK differ significantly in their determination of a
>city/town/village -- The US seems to define their terminology based on
>the type of local government, while the UK bases it primarily on certain
>amenities provided by the municipality (I could be wrong on this, but it
>doesn't matter for the point I'm trying to make).  Neither country bases
>it on the population.  Some countries have minimum population
>requirements to be a certain type, but I am not aware of any where it
>is the only definition.
>
>So I think that at least that page should be modified to reflect this
>fact, by removing the comments about population.
>
>Since the distinction among these place-types is so varied throughout
>the world, is it even useful or could it be better served by having
>place="municipality" replacing all of those?
>
>On a personal note I found the word "Town" to be confusing, but that
>seems to be due to my specific location and the unusual terminology used
>there. [1] I think I'll just have to suck it up and deal with it.
>
>1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_subdivisions_of_Wisconsin#Town
>
>--
>Alex Mauer "hawke"
>OpenPGP key ID: 0x51192FF2
>
>
>
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