What makes a road belong to a city?

First off, I have read the Wiki section about this question.

Now I’m still left with questions. How is this supposed to work in detail? Should I add a new area to the map with place=village and place_name=“village name” and also a node with place=village and name=“village name”?

How does a router know that “village name” and “village name” are the same? Is there some node ID reference required?

Would it be enough to add an area with place=village and the village name is determined by a single node within that area with place=village and name=“village name”? Or do both map elements need the village name set?

The last sentence in that FAQ entry is very important “these areas are not common in OSM data”. I think it’s wonderfull if you want to make those areas though ask yourself why do you need them and what constitutes an area of a village? There are lots of different type of areas; administrative, cultural, temporary, estimated and geographical. All these will differ and will perhaps even have the same name, and all makes sense to put in Openstreetmap. I know there are people doing large administrative region imports in Germany.

Yes features with the same name is a problem, but not that big of a deal since it can be postprocessed at some later point. If you can be bothered with creating areas for a village then that’s wonderfull please do, but please create the nodes as well.

I have no problem to create an estimation of village borders that are precise at least in the parts where it’s necessary. I see two major uses in those areas:

  1. They finally replace those stupid traffic_sign=city_limit tags that can be very misleading in cases where one village/city ends and another one begins at the same point.

  2. They allow a reliable assignment of roads to a village. If you’re looking for a certain address and only know it partially, or if a street name should appear in a near village but is not yet known for the village you’re selecting, then you’ll end up being routed to the wrong village and the router won’t even notice. Streets are in a clear is_in relation to villages. This relation is always described as a geographical area.

My question was, how should I tag those areas? I know how and where to create them. I understand that a central village node is useful, too. But how can I reliably link the area to its central node, which contains the name and possibly additional information about the village?

I believe there is no one else who is doing good work on areas, i.e. the info isn’t KISS. But you can read alot of very unorganized info on the wiki: Tag info about Boundary, alot more than that page as well.

I’m giving up. I can tell where our village border is. That’s where the signs are on the roadside. But I really can’t tell what admin_level this border is. I have read two wiki pages now and am confused with three tables and contradictory annotations and explanations. This may be a problem within Germany though.

Plus is our community some sort of a special one: Its name is an “artificial” name, none of its villages is named like it. (It’s always confusing on maps where the community name shows up on smaller zoom levels but the single village names appear on higher zoom levels. The same counts for road signs depending or not depending on the distance…)

Just tag it, don’t bother so much with being precise, e.g. you can use:
place=village
name=“my Name”
area=yes
note=“This is an estimated village border, measured using signs in the streets”

Perhaps:
admin_level=8
FIXME=admin_level might not be correct.

Hmm, admin levels are pretty simple in Sweden, not that I like them they are very hard to understand why they where made this way.

Hm, okay, but it’s only a good guess like this. The position is exact at the roads and only usable for street grouping elsewhere. With those TODO notes and guessed admin_level (I decided for 10 but it may as well be 9 - that’s a distinction nobody does here) it may not be very useful.

Hey LonelyPixel,

I think that way it is still a lot better than not mapping the area. And, as was said before, it can be fixed later, if more info is available.

Yeah, better making stupid things than worthless things, is a good motto. :slight_smile: In the early days someone said “I see nothing wrong with estimating motorways with a long straight way connecting two cities”, I don’t think anyone have actually done that but it’s an interesting quote.