The fundamental issue is that there are postal addresses and what might
be called "civil addresses" or "physical addresses" ('locational' I
understand but is not normal English usage). In the US, we also have
"911 dispatchable location" which is all about getting there physically
and is US-bureaucatic-speak.
OSM has decided to tag postal addresses on address points. I find this
an odd choice, and I think it really doesn't mean this, as companies
that use PO boxes are not tagged that way, but with the street address.
The only fix I think of is to have a separate set of tags paddr: and a
rule that those should be set if they are different from the addr: tags
(which are postal). except postcode, which is a postal-only.
It is further messy that there are postal addresses, and then addresses
that Fedex, UPS, DHL etc. deliver to. In the US mostly the post office
(USPS) maintains a database and people verify/match against it and those
are used as legitimate physical delivery addresses by non-USPS carriers.
All in all I think it was a mistake to tag postal addresses. Maybe we
can just redefine addr:foo to be the physical address, except
addr:postcode is the code assigned by the government/monopoly delivery
service. And then add some mailing address tag for things that need
them.
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