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In Kuwait, a correct address is given using Street, Block, Area. Since most if not all services and applications use only the street and the city to point to an address, people were bewildered to what to do in Kuwait's map. People asked for help twice 1, 2. Since no solution was reached, I decided to follow HERE maps, Kuwait Finder (The official governmental GIS ststem), and my Cadillac car approach to the problem; labeling each city and block as if there were separate, unrelated entities. example picture, and all three of them can be used to find addresses correctly. (compare them with Google Maps, where people can't search using addresse).

Since there seems to be no other practical solution, I decided to follow HERE's approach. I added a node to every block and named it "Area name - Block No.", and tagged them as cities so addresses can appear correctly.

The problem I am facing now is that even after doing this and manually entering the cities for every addition to the map, OSM still shows the address with the area's name only, without the block number when searching (example). I have no idea what's causing this although I even added addr:city tag manually to all additions.

asked 07 Aug '16, 12:40

Monachorum's gravatar image

Monachorum
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accept rate: 0%

edited 08 Aug '16, 19:49

aseerel4c26's gravatar image

aseerel4c26 ♦
32.6k18248554


Firstly, Nominatim is not particularly good at block-based addressing schemes. Therefore it might not be possible to achieve all that you wish.

Second, you should not use place=city; instead consider using place=neighbourhood which seems to fit the position of these blocks in the notional hierarchy better. Multiple cities close together which aren't actual cities will really confuse search results.

Thirdly, try & avoid tagging for a particular outcome with current software. The software is continually improving to address specific cases. If generic accurate tagging is used it is much more likely that these improvements will show up.

Lastly, ensure you are not copying from 3rd party maps (whether from HERE or Kuwait Government).

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answered 07 Aug '16, 13:22

SK53's gravatar image

SK53 ♦
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accept rate: 22%

Regarding the second part, most services are designed to show addresses with Cities and a lot of them leave neighbourhoods outside, since they are in most countries not necessary to find addresses and navigate. Tagging as neighbourhoods instead of cities might screw the addresses, which is the whole point of me asking this question. No worries, I'm not copying from any property software.

(11 Aug '16, 16:46) Monachorum

This is not true: for many years people have been building maps for Garmins (which do call places cities) and very successfully use the full panoply of place= values. Labelling things which arent cities as cities will never* give you good results. Aligning tags to a particular service is usually called "tagging for the renderer" in OSM, and is strongly discouraged.

(12 Aug '16, 10:02) SK53 ♦

Alright. That means there isn't really a real solution for the Kuwait dilemma, unfortunately. I'll re-tag the blocks as neighbourhoods, but will keep the same naming for addr:city attribute so services that show only the street and city show a valid address in Kuwait.

(22 Aug '16, 04:52) Monachorum
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question asked: 07 Aug '16, 12:40

question was seen: 6,731 times

last updated: 22 Aug '16, 04:52

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum