[OSM-talk] Populated places: how to use is_in tag?

[Abigail Brady]

On 10/8/07, graham <graham at theseamans.net> wrote:
>
> So how would you see the formal administrative names being used on osm?
> Not at all, and we just have the informal ones (which may in general
> happen to coincide with the administrative ones)? Or we have two
> separate sets of tags? I see people have recently begun to add
> administrative boundaries to the map, so it's not a problem that can be
> permanently evaded.


Two separate sets of tags seems a good idea.  For administrative boundaries,
you can define an exact border.
With locality names, its usually quite fuzzy (where does one suburb start
and the next stop?) and will depend upon opinion (and whether you are an
estate agent!)

I would suggest place=suburb,town,city should remain for informal places,
and maybe some system devised for indicating approximate extent...

> (Urban parishes, in Greater London and and the rest of the country, were
> > moribund well before 1965, with a 1:1 mapping of parish to borough
> > anyway.  As an example, the parish of Cranford was abolished in 1935,
> > going to form part of the parish of "Heston and Isleworth", which was
> > contigous with the urban district of the same).
>
> So do these historical names - which are still very used locally - map
> to any modern formal system (electoral, health-care, educational...) or
> are they purely kept alive by local custom?
>

The latter, mostly.  Administrative area names are usually based on local
customary names.

-- 
Abi
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