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

Lars Aronsson lars at aronsson.se
Fri Jan 5 03:11:48 GMT 2007


Mike Collinson wrote:

> As the primary intent of Place: city,town,village,hamlet,suburb is to 
> decide whether whether to annotate a map with the locality and the 
> relative emphasis to be placed (e.g. text size), "municipality" has 
> no value and might be better placed in a separate tag describing the 
> exact civic status of a locale?

I'm not sure this is correct.  In many cases the word municipality 
is used as a smaller kind of county.  This is the case when the 
word is used as an English translation of the Swedish "kommun". 
Using this word to cover "city, town, village, hamlet, suburb" 
could be misleading.  See the article 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipality

I think the term you're looking for is "urban area", which can be 
defined by population density.  This is not a spot, but a land 
coverage type (along with field, forest, bog, lake), and doesn't 
necessarily have a name of its own, 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_area

However, an "urban area" (e.g. "Greater London") can also span 
many towns.

One defintion of "urban area" is the region where the speed limit 
is 50 km/h.  This is indicated by special signs as you enter and 
leave the area.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se




More information about the talk mailing list