Springfield Township - Change to “Springfield Twp” Note: I’m starting to define Juliustown based on the census maps. Much of the area in Springfield Twp has no city label due to the conflict with the other Springfield in North Jersey.
Hamilton Township - Change to “Hamilton Twp” Note: I’m also going through, splitting “Mercerville-Hamilton Square” and “Yardville-Groveville” into their respective CDPs based on the posted census maps bit by bit.
Bordentown (2) - This should just be “Bordentown.”
As I said, I can’t find which segment still has this to change it.
In most cases, “XX Twp” is at least partially marked, and this is just for road standardization. PhantomSoul covered a few of the others I saw, and there are some more I’ll have to hunt for again.
As for CDPs, there’s no conflicts at that level, but there is one complicated township/borough conflict. We have Hopewell Township and Hopewell, the borough, in Mercer County. There’s also a Hopewell Township in Cumberland County that is completely undefined. It’s a small area compared with the more prominent Hopewell Township and borough in Mercer County…but what should we do with a case like this?
If there is no conflict, the proper convention for Mansfield is just “Mansfield”, the Twp is dropped. That’s what I need to know, if there is no conflict in the state, there is no need for the Twp type to be appended.
This happens in places where I’ve had to identify 500-series mH or non-500-series PS where the city was either incorrectly referencing an unincorporated CDP or marked as “No City” likely due to a naming conflict from the TIGER map. The ones that end in “Twp” are the ones I’ve identified since we’ve established that standard - example: Lebanon Twp, not to be confused with Lebanon borough. I figured if I’m editing a segment, I might as well update it to current spec. Regular streets quickly get cumbersome doing this, so I was holding out for a more efficient systematic way to do those.
Unfortunately with Millstone Township and Monroe Township, I worked to identify mH and PS missed by the TIGER maps before the -Twp standard, so I just added the word Township to avoid conflicts with CDPs elsewhere in the state - both of which apparently exist.
Right. There is a conflicting Mansfield already in Warren County. The same goes for Springfield, Hamilton, Lawrence, and Millstone.
With Burlington, Pemberton, Freehold, and Hopewell, there’s a township and a split-off borough. Again, I don’t know what to do with Hopewell. As I mentioned, Hopewell has the problem with the township in Mercer (“Hopewell Twp”), the borough split from the township (“Hopewell”), and ANOTHER township in Cumberland (currently unlabeled). Should we consolidate the township and borough in Mercer as just “Hopewell” to open up "Hopewell Twp for the Cumberland Township? Also, are we differentiating these township/borough splits regularly or ONLY in the case of naming conflicts?
Franklin Twp, Somerset County is a good example where the CDPs of Somerset and Franklin Park to name are few are represented in WME. Now that FC has been mostly implemented in the state, should we look to clean-up the primary city field?
NJ DoT has a great reference here that shows the CDPs and other alternate names for places and the incorporated towns, boroughs, TWP, etc. that are associated to the alt names.
That is a good question. I am not sure how the New Jersey Accessors office handles this type of situation (regarding if they recognize the CDP name), but in Arizona, many of the CDPs are and entered on the map. There are a few that are not and go by the city with which the CDP is located in.
Also, changing names and creating alt fields can render issues in the routing. There has been a post about this issue. I would research if the CDP is recognized by the county and state as an official name. I have seen a few CDPs in AZ that aren’t recognized at the state level but the local or neighborhood level only.
Check and see if a CDP has been given a zip code and if local businesses and residents also list the CDP name as the location. Although there is plenty of information out there to make a decent decision, I would like to have Orbitc’s opinion on how to handle this situation as this is an important topic.
I would not be inclined to include CDPs as primary city names, mainly because primary city names in Waze are used to define polygons to visibly show the extent of a city’s limits, as in the WME cities layer. Because of this, we want to use something that really doesn’t change, or pretty much takes an act of God to change. CDPs, by their own definition, have rather soft borders, meaning they aren’t really defined by a formal charter the same way municipalities are, so their boundaries can change at any time with little notice or due process. The most common CDP-based subdivisions known to most people are probably based on postal zip codes and the official “city name” associated with them so that every zip code within the state has a unique “city name.” But the Post Office can change the boundaries of any zip code, add new ones, or even remove zip codes whenever it determines it needs to, which would once again make our map out of date.
Currently, these polygons are not shown in the Waze client, but I cannot simply dismiss their relevance because the state wiki does specifically say (4th paragraph under Cities and Towns) not to enter unincorporated names into the Primary City. This means we agreed to naming cities this way for a reason despite considering that many areas of the state are more commonly known by an unincorporated name.
Can anyone say what the importance of the city polygons reflecting incorporated municipalities is? To me, that seems to be the kingpin behind why we do our city naming this way.
EDIT: I should also add that incorporated township names are what you see on the small green highway signs when you cross from one city to another, and not unincorporated towns or other CDPs.
Thank you for the explanation. I am aware that this is an age-old discussion and we both agree this isnt causing routing issues and therefore I dont want to press the issue.
My main points here are:
A-
B-
Here are the wikis/forums I was referring to: PA , MD , MI , NE - Mass (of the 351 cities/towns , approx 150 are CDP’s). I cant seem to pull the forum I found earlier regarding CA, but I think these should be sufficient.
All of these States’ guidelines point to the exact opposite of what the NJ wiki clearly states, as you’ve said. I wonder if it is an older wiki page that may require examination, or -without trying to be redundant- is there a reason why NJ is (seemingly) the only state with these guidelines (I have not searched all 50 states, just the ones I know to be plentiful of CDP’s). Many states vary on many a topic, so it is entirely plausible that this is an exclusion that is state-specific.
Once again, this is not a pressing issue as we do not have routing issues, which I don’t believe to be the case. The one UR I came across stated simply “Bayville not Berkeley” and was just a “city name on map” concern, which is an entirely different topic.
Regardless, the wiki is to be followed in its entirety and I have been compiling a list to submit to an RC or Champ. It hit me when the list started to grow abnormally long. Hence the request for clarification.
Here in PA there are some CPDs that are much more recognized than the incorporated name. To the point where people look at you funny if you use the incorporated name. So my strong preference is to use the incorporated name, but we just needed to bow to the will of the people in some cases.
Jon summed it up nicely. Lacking any other information, the incorporated name is appropriate. But if there is a known reason to change it (naming conflicts, common usage), then an exception should be OK.
However, I should point out that there will be issues documenting that. You are likely to have your changes undone by an editor who lacks your knowledge and sees the mismatch to official name.
Finally, all this relly doesn’t matter much. It is rare that an incorrect name will affect the user experience. Google will find the destination either way, and Waze will use the Google coordinates. There’s very little in the UI that displays the city name – if you select a Waze point, it will show in history, and if you long-press to select a map point, it will show the city. If you have city name changes on highways, you may encounter issues with detour avoidance. Otherwise, can’t think offhand where this will matter.
I am on board completely with what everyone is saying here and I appreciate the feedback.
qwaletee - your concerns regarding “well meaning editors” however is precisely the issue. How many “major cities” are there that an editor who READ the wiki will look at and say OK im not supposed to use CDP’s right? He will promptly go and change Woodbridge (CDP) to Woodbridge Twp, Old Bridge (CDP) to Old Bridge Twp, Barnegat>Barneget Twp, Lacey>Lacey Twp, Toms River>Toms River Twp, Lakewood>Lakewood Twp. Thats not even touching upon the smaller communities like Dover Beaches, Leisure Village, Cedar Glen Lakes. Per the wiki guidance every NJ editor SHOULD/MUST go ahead and change all of these to XXX Twp. Which we all agree is wrong as/when there is no conflict. This addresses Jons extremely important point that certain unincorporated place names are better known than the actual name. Every place mentioned above is almost unequivocally known simply as Toms River, Old Bridge, Woodbridge. All CDP’s. In fact, in the case of Old Bridge we have moved to change all Old Bridge Twp to simply Old Bridge. That is extremely conflicting and confusing to editors that DO their research.
Hence, my proposal is simply to change the wiki guidance to include CDPs (except when they conflict) but exclude other unincorporated places. At least this would be accurate and I am not understanding the resistance towards it.
Sidepoint: There is one more thought here, although I have yet to test it. A lot of house numbers from the original base map import we all know are incorrect. I wonder what would happen in a scenario where Waze’s address has been manually fixed in WME but not in GMM. A search will give you the correct address in Waze, but with a seemingly incorrect “town name”. For someone unfamiliar with the lay of the land they will immediately opt for the second result (Googles) since it has the town name they were searching for in the first place. But this address turns out to be a few miles away… Speculation and food for thought.
Um, let’s not draw wrong conclusions here. The NJ Wiki also says to only use the Twp and/or county name suffixes only when necessary to avoid conflicts with a city, borough, or other township in the state with the same name (Cities and Towns, 2nd Paragraph).
We just need to explain to editors that a large part of the existing data is wrong and needs to be fixed, but that it has always been a lower priority because of more pressing problems much more directly impacting navigation.
I don’t agree with this assessment at all. The official city is Berkeley township, and that’s also what you see on the green signs along all state (and higher) roads crossing the border into it - not Bayville.
EDIT: I do agree that this should be a nationwide discussion, as we really need to come up with a national guideline for city naming that will be consistent in all states.
What makes the unincorporated name more relevant than the municipal name? The fact that someone says so in a UR, forum posting, or GH? The fact that post office addresses use a different city name than the municipal name? The fact that a certain neighborhood colloquially uses a totally different name to describe itself even from the local post office city name? (this often happens in NJ with uber-wealthy neighborhoods that seek to distance themselves from their less affluent neighboring counterparts - e.g. Fairview or Navesink in Middletown).
