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I've noticed that different neighbourhood names seem to appear at different zoom levels. Some show when zoomed out quiet a bit. Others don't appear until you're much more zoomed in. IN north London some neighbourhoods show at 2km zoom. Others not until 1km.

Is there a setting that controls that? Has a decision been taken about which neighbourhoods should show at what point? If so are there criteria that govern this?

asked 30 Mar '18, 20:08

hjuk's gravatar image

hjuk
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Can you give a few examples (just quoting the osm.org URL would work)?

(30 Mar '18, 20:26) SomeoneElse ♦
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https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/51.5842/-0.1360 vs https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/51.5892/-0.1200 vs https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/51.5870/-0.1318

On the first, for example the neighbourhoods of Harringay (not the borough Haringey), Seven Sisters and Muswell Hill are not showing. Yet West Green, which is pretty small and even rarely used by locals is present. At the next level of zoom, Harringay and Seven Sisters show up. Not till the third magnification does Muswell Hill show up. Oddly Wood Green isn't marked at all.

For what it's worth, the London Borough of Harringay identify five 'Metropolitan Centres' in the borough (which roughly equates to the most important centres of population).Those are Crouch End, Harringay, Muswell Hill, Tottenham and Wood Green. One of those doesn't show at all and two only at higher levels of zoom than other less significant neighbourhoods.

Does that help at all?

(31 Mar '18, 00:36) hjuk

I suspect that what is happening is that Muswell Hill is not appearing at zoom 13 because it's a place=suburb, and there isn't room for it after the place=suburb for Fortis Green has been displayed just to the west. The software that decides where to place text is ultimately Mapnik, though the map style describes how things should be displayed (if there's room).

So to answer the question - yes, there are various settings that determine what gets displayed (size of text, that sort of thing) but there's nother that chooses between (in this case) Fortis Green and Muswell Hill - that's just random luck which happens to get shown first. Wood Green seems to exist only as a station not as a suburb.

There isn't really any solution to the problem, since you can't have "every suburb displaying more prominently than anything else". If there's not room for two near each other, one will lose out.

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answered 31 Mar '18, 00:58

SomeoneElse's gravatar image

SomeoneElse ♦
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Thanks. That would certainly make sense for Muswell Hill, but there doesn't seem to be anything crowding out Harringay. It's not clear why that's affected.

Is it possible for users to add suburbs or is that a reserved function?

(31 Mar '18, 01:05) hjuk

Okay stow that question. I found the answer through Google at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:place%3Dsuburb

(31 Mar '18, 11:54) hjuk

Indeed it's not clear. You can test it by installing testing environment for osm-carto with a data from this area and remove some layers to see when it might start showing, but it's quite nitpicking activity and it's also possible that it's excluded by the rule that it'd be just too close to the Crouch End label (which you can still test by downloading data in .osm format and just remove/edit things in the text/XML editor before importing to a database).

There are no limits in what you can add to the OSM database as long as it's something following our rules (see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice ). Suburbs are surely something we welcome to be added and edited.

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answered 31 Mar '18, 03:56

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kocio
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accept rate: 20%

Thanks Kocio. I've looked at adding the missing neighbourhood by adding a point. I see that the other neighbourhoods are borough/suburb. When I go to add a point that doesn't come up as an option. What am I missing?

(31 Mar '18, 11:40) hjuk
1

What editor do you use? It should be always possible to add tags by hand, even if this is not included in the presets.

(31 Mar '18, 13:30) kocio
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question asked: 30 Mar '18, 20:08

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last updated: 31 Mar '18, 13:30

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