This is from a thread on impo...@openstreetmap.org of the same title (Vol. 123,
Issue 6).
The thread is not attached here, but it involves Brian asking after tagging CDP
boundaries in Oahu County and its coterminous incorporated
consolidated-city-county of Honolulu.
Brian, I agree with Mateusz that you help OSM by specifying better granularity
of place tagging on Oahu, but with some minor clarifications. In the USA, we
tag CDP polygons with boundary=census, no admin_level tag with any value
whatsoever. We do not tag postal boundaries (or if we do, we shouldn't), as
while the USPS is sort of ("barely?") governmental, the imprimatur of locality
that it may lend an area, its ZIP code, isn't a boundary at all, it is more
like a routing algorithm for mail, so I disagree with your "reasonable
approach" conclusion in your option 2. Yes, it is true that the name of a post
office may offer a sense of place (name) to an area. In my strong opinion,
those MIGHT be tagged with a node, if no other better place/locality name data
are available. I slightly disagree with Mateusz that we "reflect local postal"
boundaries, as we don't do that in the USA with ZIP codes: they are routing
algorithms, not actual areas definable by a (multi)polygon. I do agree with
him that "it makes sense" to sort through and both better understand and better
tag such "smaller than an island/county" areas. In the USA, and in a state
with no municipal government (an oddity of Hawaii, but a truth nonetheless)
this is best done with nodes tagged place=* primarily and secondarily CDP
boundaries (as they are more statistical than on-the-ground factual and by
definition change constantly). DISTANTLY secondarily.
CDP boundaries should be actual (you say state GIS authorities provide these
federal data), tagged boundary=census (and no admin_level tag). But I assert
that much better are nodes tagged with place=*, with appropriate values (town,
village, hamlet, isolated_dwelling). In the USA, these are added to OSM nodes
like this largely based on population. For example, in the
https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States_admin_level#Unincorporated_areas
section of the wiki I referred to earlier, we say "place=village on rural
unincorporated communities with a population between 200 and 9,999 (consensus
is emerging that a 'village' has at least a small commercial landuse area: a
market, fuel station/convenience store, a bank, post office, etc.)." For
populations between 10,000 and 50,000 tag the node place=town, for between
three households and 199 tag the node place=hamlet, etc. (Our wikis can be
helpful).
So, to sum that up, tag with place=* nodes where you can (or have population
data, or even better, know personally from local, on-the-ground experience).
If you have nothing else, CDP data tagged as boundary=census polygons are OK,
but in some sense, these data are not much more than "better than nothing." If
a post office name is used on a node for an area with a place=* tag having an
appropriately-population-derived value, that's OK, too, but don't use ZIP code
"boundaries," such data don't belong in OSM.
Concomitantly, "CDP boundary data are available for Hawaii" is similar for what
is going on with the same for Alaska: simply because the federal Department of
Commerce's Census Bureau aggregates population data into statistical areas
(CDPs) doesn't absolutely mean that these data are the best representation of
"place and size" to enter into OSM. (In Alaska, they are convenient to
delineate smaller areas of the Unorganized Borough — a huge area bigger than
even Texas — and these areas are created in mutual cooperation with the state
of Alaska, adding to legitimacy for OSM entry). Slightly differently with
Hawaii, though the similarity of "the federal government wishes there to be
smaller, sub-county sized areas to delineate," asthe state of Hawaii does do
this (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honolulu_County%2C_Hawaii#County_districts to see
a small map of Honolulu's nine "county districts," which I support being mapped
in OSM as admin_level=7 boundaries). Hawaiians on the ground, you included,
very likely also identify many more place names, though none of these seems
like it would be a boundary=admin_level, much better a node tagged place=*.
I'd like to see the best data representation of those enter OSM. The state of
Hawaii absolutely, unequivocally delineates "what is and where the boundaries
are" of the County of Oahu AND it absolutely, unequivocally delineates (and has
since 1908) that Honolulu is a consolidated-city-county (CCC) with Oahu. So
OSM's (in the USA) convention of tagging both the admin_level=6 Oahu boundary
(as we do, relation link included before) and a new coterminous boundary tagged
both admin_level=8 and name=City of Honolulu is correct: this is a CCC as we
specify in our admin_level wiki. (Honolulu IS an incorporated city —
admin_level=8 — and OSM really should tag counties, cities and CCCs as what
they are, especially as Honolulu's population reaches 1 million).
All that said, I support the addition of the coterminous (with Oahu) Honolulu
city boundary, removal of the much smaller (and older and incorrect)
admin_level=8 polygon mentioned before, PERHAPS addition of the "county
districts" (though it would be good to discuss their admin_level=7 tag a bit
more), MAYBE the CDP data (as boundary=census polygons without any admin_level
tag) if there exist nothing better, and absolutely certainly say YES to adding
more nodes tagged place=* with values of town, village, hamlet or
isolated_dwelling in the County of Oahu (and anywhere the state of Hawaii, for
that matter). That's my best "resonance of OSM consensus of how to do this in
the USA" and while Hawaii is certainly a UNIQUE part of the USA, it is, most
agree, that (at least today, and that's how we map).
I invite further discussion, either on- or off-list.
Aloha, SteveA
California
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