Classifying local authorities (place=*)

Hi,
is there (or should there be) a specific guideline for Israel, except the general ones found at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/He:Map_Features#Places ?

I’m talking about the difference between “city”,“town” and “village”.

Should there be any correspondence with the formal definitions of the Ministry of Interior?

  1. Ir (usually above 20,000)
  2. Mo’aza Mekomit (usually between 2,000 and 20,000)
  3. Ishuv Kafri

For instance, Be’er Ya’akov is tagged as “village” although I think it should be “town”. It has “suburbs”, which seems inappropriate for a “village”. Formally it is a “Mo’aza Mekomit”, and its population is just above 10,000.

dimka

I follow the above as rough guidelines.

“Ir” is either town or city, depending on size and/or importance.
If it’s a Moaza Mekomit, then it is a village. In some cases it could a candidate to be tagged as a town.
Village is everything smaller. From a Kibutz, Moshav, down to a Havat Bodedim in the Negev…
It was decided that we won’t have hamlets.

But there are exception…
e.g. Modi’in-Maccabim-Reut: it has less than 100,000 people (about 73,000 according to wikipedia) but it’s regarded a very important place and so is tagged as a city.

It’s not always obvious what’s appropriate, but it’s not a big mistake if a small (10K-25K people) place is tagged as a town.

This particular place might be a town.
Maybe it’s a good guideline - The fact that it has suburbs, or accumulated smaller villages (Talmei Menashe) make it a town.

Re suburbs: “Shikun Banim” in a Kibutz or Moshav doesn’t mean it’s a suburb! :wink:

If you look at a list of the places in Mehoz Merkaz and drill down into the “Ir” and “Moaza Mekomit”, you’ll see that there is a difference between them…

I would suggest that some of those Moaza Mekomit are villages, even though they are officially Moaza Mekomit.
Don’t forget that OSM should also follow international standards, and the fact that it’s a place on its own (and not part of a Moaza Ezorit) doesn’t mean it’s a town.

talkat.