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I'm currently mapping Kuwait. However, Kuwait subdivions are a little troublesome for mapping:

  • Kuwait is divided to six governorates (province is used on OSM for that), this is not a big deal.
  • Governorates are divided to areas. Areas are not big at all (a typical area is normally no more than 5KM2 in size). Area names are not repeated (not used for more than one time for one place only) across the whole country. I don't know what to call them in OSM. I used place=city for now.
  • The real problem is with the blocks. So each area is divided to blocks. Blocks need to be included in the address, because streets can be repeated across all blocks. For example, we have:

    • House 18, Street 1, Block 1, Jabriya, Kuwait
    • House 18, Street 1, Block 2, Jabriya, Kuwait
    • House 18, Street 1, Block 3, Jabriya, Kuwait
    • House 18, Street 1, Block 4, Jabriya, Kuwait

    etc... I need a solution that will show both the block number and the area name in addresses, and how should I tag the blocks and how should I tag areas? Please keep in mind that mentioning the governorate is not important at all and mentioning the governorate after the area is not normal and not used locally.

Note: this question was asked before but one year ago but no answer was given.

asked 12 Aug '15, 14:43

Kuwaity26's gravatar image

Kuwaity26
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accept rate: 0%

So you say: I need a solution that will show both the block number and the area name in addresses.

Where does this "show" take place? as a result on any geocoding service like the ones listet at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Search_engines ?

And about correct tagging of each house with an address: I think we need looking at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Addresses and http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:addr

There we have tags like addr:suburb, addr:district or addr:subdistrict

Can that be helpful?

(12 Aug '15, 16:59) stephan75

and here you can see what boundaries are present at the moment inside the OSM database.

(12 Aug '15, 17:01) stephan75

@Stephan75 That's what I am trying to achieve. As for your second comment, I was thinking about services like Mapquest, when the user righ-clicks somewhere, the pop-up will tell them that they're in Street X, Area, Governorate, Kuwait, which wouldn't be much useful. If we could remove the governorate and put the block number before the area that'd be problem solved.

(12 Aug '15, 18:01) Kuwaity26

If I put areas as districts and blocks as subdistrict, will that solve the problem? I mean will they both show when the user do as in the previous example? because AFAIK, they only show the city (or its equivalent) and the province (and it's equivalent). I really don't care about naming, I just want the end user to get a good result if he wants to know about his location.

(12 Aug '15, 18:10) Kuwaity26

If that doesn't work and the block doesn't show on the results, can we just make each area a province and each block a town/city? it's of course wrong, technically speaking, but it'll finally show the two important fields AND make the unnecessary province (governorate) field not show up. The naming may be wrong but the most important thing is the end result for the user.

(12 Aug '15, 18:13) Kuwaity26

An approach used by HERE maps is labeling each block with it's area name. So for Rumaithiya, which consists of 12 blocks, there is twelve entries called Rumaithiya-Block 1, Rumaithiya-Block 2...etc. This approach surely fixes the problem, but it will make searching for the area without a specific block show 12 results instead of just one, and will make the map appear very congested, as showing the area name+block+number will take too much space on the map.

(12 Aug '15, 18:19) Kuwaity26
showing 5 of 6 show 1 more comments

place=city_block has some usage (~4000). People have sometimes used it as a point, sometimes as an area. It's not clear to me how/if Nominatim or the standard rendering handle it. But it seems most important to get the data in, then you can figure out the rest.

On a related note, addr:block_number is used quite a bit (~20K) in Japan on individual addresses.

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answered 13 Aug '15, 14:31

neuhausr's gravatar image

neuhausr
7.5k870121
accept rate: 21%

Thanks, I'll try them and see if they (block numbers) show on the map, and if they show when righ-clicking on a Mapquest location.

(14 Aug '15, 07:34) Kuwaity26

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question asked: 12 Aug '15, 14:43

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last updated: 14 Aug '15, 07:34

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