Repeating this, since it seemed to get bumped by all the building import talk. Now with a catchier subject line. DannyMcD
My understanding of place tagging is that place=city, place=town, and place=village are for distinct urban settlements, whether or not they are separate municipalities. Place=suburb is for large parts of urban settlements (such as North York in Toronto, or Kanata in Ottawa). Whether to classify a place as a place=city/town/village or place=suburb depends on the facts on the ground (I.e. whether a place is part of a larger urban settlement), and not primarily on municipal/administrative boundaries. Municipal boundaries might be somewhat relevant in determining if a place is distinct (e.g. Vaughan is a city, not a suburb), but they are a relatively minor factor. The main way that municipal names are mapped is through admin boundary relations, not place nodes (although many municipalities have the same name as their largest urban settlement, of course). The way to distinguish between a place=city, place=town, and place=village is population size, with nearby places shading things a bit (so a smaller population size qualifies for a place=town in Northern Ontario). Very roughly, a city has population >50k, a town has population 5k-50k, and a village is <5k. There seems to be a persistent mis-understanding of this scheme, where various editors (mainly @OntarioEditor and various other accounts controlled by them) believe that place=city/town/village are for municipalities, whether or not the municipality has one major urban settlement with the same name as the municipality or not. They are also tagging all unincorporated places in a municipality as place=suburb, regardless of size or distinctness. Finally, they are using the official title of the municipality to determine if it is a city/town/village, whether than using population size. This can lead to very misleading results, as Ontario municipalities called towns range in size from 313 to 195k, and Ontario municipalities called cities range in size from 8k to 2.7M. Quebec “ville”s (which means town or city) range in size from 5 to 1.6M. To give an example, consider Minto ( https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/7486154) in southwest Ontario. It has two distinct population centres, Harriston and Palmerston. In the OSM scheme, both are tagged as place=town, and the municipality name Minto (since it does not correspond to a distinct urban settlement) does not get a place tag (except perhaps as a place=municipality at the municipal offices). The mistaken scheme is to tag Harriston and Palmerston as place=suburb, and create a place=town node for Minto. Any thoughts?
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