Like it or not, in the UK addresses are defined by Royal Mail. They're introduced the concept of a "postal town", and this is one of the few common elements that each address must always have. Once you accept that the Post Town is intended to be a nearby significant place (to help with delivery routing and identifying the rough location of the addressed property) rather than being a place that the address is "in", then it's really no more of a fiction than the postcode. (The village I grew up in had a GL postcode, despite it being in Worcestershire. I've currently got an IP postcode, despite being in Norfolk and closer to Norwich (NR) than Ipswich.)
On the basis that it's a required part of each address, I would recommend that we do store the post town in OSM addresses. There are significant advantages to storing it in a consistent way, and the best existing tag to do this would be addr:city. (We wouldn't want to invent a new tag (e.g. addr:posttown), since as a UK-only term that will simply be ignored by most international data consumers. We then have a possible hierarchy of named localities between the street and the post town to record as part of the address. I would suggest using appropriate values from the set {addr:hamlet, addr:village, addr:town, addr:suburb}. (I don't see any other alternatives to this.) Most of these key names already have a reasonable number of uses in OSM (addr:town is the lowest, but that still has 59k uses), so it seems that others are doing this too. Regarding properties (e.g. on named terraces or sub-streets), where there are two street names (Thoroughfare and Dependent Throughourfare in Rail Mail terminology) then we need a second key to store the other street name under. Certainly if there is an addr:housenumber or addr:housename, I think we need to use addr:street for the street/terrace name on which that name or number applies. Otherwise, software that's unaware of the second key name will think it's house number n on the main street not the sub-street. There are already about 3.5k uses of addr:parentstreet in OSM, so I'd recommend using that for the main street, and addr:street for the terrace or sub-street name. If any data-users aren't aware of addr:parentstreet it's not a major issue, since it will still pick up the correct terrace/sub-street name, and the locality, which will probably be enough to use as an address. I would strongly argue against using addr2 in connection with sub-streets, as it's not standardised, and is likely to not be picked up by any software. There's an abondoned proposal at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/addr2 , but that was for the case of a single property on a street corner having two formal addresses, one on each street, not for the case of two streets in a hierarchy. Robert. On Sun, 20 Dec 2020 at 12:47, Dave Abbott <dave.abb...@pandaemonia.org> wrote: > I am trying to make sure I tag addresses correctly. I am currently > trying to understand how to map in my area. > > The postal addresses are like: > > 99 Postal Street > Smalltown > Largertown > West Yorks XY9 7GY > > Smalltown is geographically separate to Largertown, which however is the > Postal Town. Omitting Smalltown from the address is probably correct > postally-speaking, but local residents would object as Smalltown is seen > as completely separate to other places under the same Postal Town. > > Currently tagging as - > addr:housenumber=99 > addr:street=Postal Street > addr:city=Smalltown, Largertown > > But I am pretty sure this is wrong. > > There is a page at > https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Rjw62/UK_Address_Mapping which > mentions "suggested tags" but there is no evidence that this is in use. > If correct I would be tagging as - > > addr:housenumber=99 > addr:street=Postal Street > addr:town=Smalltown > addr:city=Largertown > > Hoping someone can advise me as to the correct way to tag for the UK... > > Dave Abbott (OSM user DaveyPorcy) > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-GB mailing list > Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb -- Robert Whittaker _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb