[OSM-talk] US City Import?

[Beej Jorgensen]

I've put in all the GNIS "populated places" for San Francisco, as well 
as all of California north of Roseville (Sacramento) or so.

(I chose these as some representative rural and urban areas, because 
nothing represents the entire United States quite as well as San 
Francisco. ;) JK)

Districts are labeled as hamlets (not enough info to label them 
correctly, but at least they're there and in position.  Also, there are 
communities in there that maybe shouldn't be:

http://informationfreeway.org/?lat=37.779271673914025&lon=-122.42791924279851&zoom=15&layers=B000F000

The City has the highest concentration of these things; the country is 
far more likely to just have proper place names.

http://informationfreeway.org/?lat=39.148442297379525&lon=-122.13794032458807&zoom=14&layers=B000F000

There are about 60 populated places in the San Francisco County area, 
and about 1200 in the Northern California area.  Uploading was fairly 
quick.  I also wrote a command line tool to purge them if I have to.

Existing Cities in the database were not affected.  Nor were they 
duplicated, provided they (fairly closely) matched the name and location 
of the city that would have been imported.

So check it out, and I'll put more in if people like what they see.  If 
not, I'll pull them out and make mods, no problem.

I'll probably do the whole country about a week from now if there are no 
issues.  Or I can also do specific bbox areas on request.

Thanks!
-Beej