Waze has asked us to notify them of cities that should be removed from the database, or changed for any reason, so that they show up correctly (or don’t show up at all) on the maps. Common reasons are that an incorrect/incomplete spelling of the city name was added by mistake, or Waze is using an old (or uncommon) name for a city that it found on the original basemaps.
Changing or deleting city names will not affect the ability for Waze to find addresses.
Before submitting anything through that form, I think it would be helpful to post any suggestions here first, so that, if they are submitted, Waze knows that the community agrees that they should be eliminated.
I’d like opinions on removing all of the “Greater X Area” cities from the database. All of these are outside of city limits, and all of them surround “X”, so the city named “X” would not be affected.
Some examples:
Greater Detroit Area
Greater Kalkaska Area
Greater Chesaning Area
I believe that “City of Ann Arbor” is there because “Ann Arbor” is being used for Ann Arbor Twp. There are similar situations around Ypsilanti and Monroe.
Would it be better to merge Ann Arbor (the twp) and Ann Arbor (the city)? Or change “City of Ann Arbor” to just Ann Arbor, and “Ann Arbor” to Ann Arbor Twp? Or, should Ann Arbor Twp (in any form) just be eliminated the map? Many other states don’t have township names on the map. Is there a good reason to show this one?
They’re not real cities. In most states, outside of cities and villages the city name is blank, but in Michigan and a few others, nearby locations are shown as “Greater X Area”. To me these names don’t seem to serve a purpose and they clutter the map needlessly.
The labels are in the wrong place, then. For example, I notice there is a third “Ann Arbor” near Barton Hills. That might be a good spot for a township label, but putting it in the middle of a city is not appropriate. I also see at certain zoom levels there is an “Ann Arbor Township” near US 23.
“Ann Arbor Twp” might not be appropriate because it is actually a Charter Township. If the convention is to not make that distinction, then I guess it would be better than nothing.
To more completely answer your question, in Michigan we have some major suburban areas such as the Charter Township of Clinton and the Charter Township of West Bloomfield that have populations approaching 100,000 people. To omit them from the map would be a bit weird.
Right, I’m familiar with them and realize that people know them by name. But they’re usually referred to as Clinton and Shelby and Canton, aren’t they? Someone seeing Clinton or even Clinton Twp on the map wouldn’t be confused, would they?
Around Ann Arbor and Ypsi, though, it seems that the additional names might not be as useful, from a visual information standpoint, at least. I’m not as familiar with that area so I don’t know if Ann Arbor Charter Township is understood to be its own entity (in the sense that someone would try to navigate to “1234 Pontiac Trl Ann Arbor Charter Township” instead of “1234 Pontiac Trl Ann Arbor”) and would want to see both on the map.
As for the name “Ann Arbor” appearing twice on the map, that’s probably a city smudge, left over from when part of Michigan was accidentally showing up as Canada (i.e. the country name in some segments’ country field is set incorrectly). A lot of these have been cleaned up. I’ll investigate and add it to the list if necessary.
Well there are two different cases. One, if I do a search for xxx rural road, Ann Arbor, then I would expect it to find the road even if it’s in Pittsfield with an Ann Arbor postal address. On the other hand, if I just want Waze to take me to “Ann Arbor Charter Township”, I would hope to not end up on Main St in downtown.
People will use all kinds of combinations and may not even know if their destination is inside the city or not.
In northern Michigan, you’ll see McKinley. This messed me up at first because McKinley is in the “thumb” of Michigan. Further investigation indicates that this is McKinley Township. I don’t know that I ever heard anyone refer to McKinley in northern Michigan in the 20 or so years I lived there. Not only that, but everything I see where that is listed shows that as the primary name rather than the names of the towns through the area (Pellston, Van, Levering, Carp Lake, etc.). If you want to leave it, I’d recommend changing it to say McKinley Twp so it’s clear what it is and then make it secondary to any alternate names that are already in the system so the towns people recognize are there instead of a township that no one ever mentions and many may not even know exists. But personally, I see no value in having it on the map at all. Right now, it’s just confusing to have it there imo.
I agree it is confusing to see townships listed as cities. If there is no way to separate townships and cities, it might make sense to keep only the townships with large populations.
Good points. How should large populations be defined?
Some population threshold?
Only charter townships?
Townships with a post office with the same name?
From a cartographic standpoint, information on the map that no one is looking for does not need to be on the map. So townships whose names are generally unknown to people living around them shouldn’t be necessary.
I think population is the best, most quantifiable criteria if there is no way to separate city and township names. Just by looking at the Waze Live Map of Michigan, it seems there are only two different types of city labels. When zoomed out, it only shows large cities like Ann Arbor, Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Warren, etc. When zoomed in just one more level, it shows everything from Windsor, ON, to the “Greater Grass Lake Area” on the same screen. If I were to make a subjective choice just based on the zoom level, I would say the township threshold needs to be at least 2,500 population. In other words, there are far too many townships smaller than 2,500 people cluttering the map already.
On the other hand, if the goal is to emphasize cities and significantly minimize the number of townships, then a higher threshold of 5,000 or 10,000 would be fine.
The Greater X Area names should be removed. We seem to be unanimous on that.
This underscores the need to include a title of Township or Charter Township any time these appear on the map. Michigan townships do not have unique names.
“Richmond (2)” needs to be changed to “Richmond”. There is only one Richmond in Michigan.
Exactly. Don’t delete them, though. Those 5,000 people in northern Michigan might not be too happy that their township is gone.
We have to include “Township” in the name. As you can see, there are plenty of townships which have the same name as cities, related or unrelated, so “Township” is necessary. No one’s gonna get confused because they say “Clinton” and Waze says “Clinton Township”. (BTW, the locals call it “Clinton Township”, and the official name is “Charter Township of Clinton”.)
I don’t need we need to distinguish any further than that, though. Whether it’s a Township or a Charter Township is irrelevant for navigation.