When I editing maps, I found there is no a certain guideline to name cities and town is China.
The system which Waze is using right now, is “City” and “City County” (“XX市"和"XX市 XX县”). In this system, we lost thousands of towns, and even villages. For people using Waze map, they will struggle to find towns in destination.
I wondering, can I use “XX市"和"XX县 XX镇”,“XX县 XX乡”( “City” and “County Town”) to mark those settlements?
I was thinking this way too, but how about district? somemore town and village boundaries are very blur, there is no official guide to crop the certain area for certain towns and villages in China.
I expect waze could have city and district field when editing map.
In that situation, you are right. I think we can edit name in town center, in rural area, for no city.
Thanks Ktheyes, good idea.
Brilliant!!
I am consider to set one or two roads’ city name as village at the center of the certain village, and observe does the village name shown in live map.
Hi all, I’m a mapraider starting in on China tomorrow night and would like to resolve this issue at least for the purpose of having something in place other than marking every segment as “No City” as suggested by some senior mapraiders. This is what I propose and then I’ll explain why and what it would provide China’s Waze maps:
There are 4 naming layers in China: Province, Prefecture City, Counties (including County-level Cities), and Villages/Towns/City Districts.
I propose that we employ a double naming Primary City system that mixes these layers in ways that both most accurately identifies a road segment’s location and will create multiple City layers according to it’s placement among the whole. This is already the case in some portions of the map, but it is not very well defined nor consistent so there is a lot of city layer smudging that I’d like to resolve with this plan.
In rural areas where there is no town name (mainly for Hwy segments between cities) use: Prefecture, Province - Jinhua, Zhejiang
For villages or county-level cities within a Prefecture use: City, Prefecture - Yiwu, Jinhua; Lin’an, Hangzhou (… I’m not sure if Shi should be used to distinguish between county-level cities from villages. Probably not.)
For County-level cities with Major Districts - use District, City/Prefecture: Xiacheng, Hangzhou; Brooklyn, NYC
County names do not seem to be used much in address identification, please let me know if I’m wrong about that. If not, that’s the same as in the US. I believe Eshan within Tonglu County would be best referred to as City, Prefecture as mentioned above: Eshan, Hangzhou.
This way, You’ll have cohesive general City Layer areas for each Prefecture within a Province with only the largest municipalities creating their own islands of city layers but individual villages within each Prefecture getting their own city layer as well… without resorting to 3 or 4-name long addresses for every road segment! Only 2 for all as the standard. And whether or not you see a final Province name tells you whether or not you’re Rural, within an minor Prefecture city without Districts, in a County-level city or a village. Essentially this way, between cities you’ll see whether you’re still in the same Province or not and be able to tell between districts within a Prefecture whether you’ve changed Prefectures or not.
The one thing that crosses my mind are villages/cities that might traverse Prefecture lines, but in every case I’ve analysed, the part of the city bleeding into an adjacent Prefecture has a different City/District name. Ending with a Province name should either be reserved for Prefecture municipalities without Districts, say if Hangzhou City had a central District named Hangzhou, then it would be named Hangzhou, Zhejiang… but I also don’t see any examples of this…
For instance, if border municipalities and villages crossed Provinces… end with the Province instead so that way each city part maintains its own island distinction among its neighboring city layers. Small villages that clearly lie across prefecture borders, could also end with Province name if the Prefecture border splits it right down the middle, but could also be labelled as whichever Prefecture name has is in majority. I’d assume the former is preferred. Any city/village that crosses Province borders seems could be split between city, Province1; city, Province2, etc. but again, I have not run across such an issue. An example in the US is Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS. You don’t want to blur the lines between Provinces, perhaps also not between Prefectures, but it seems that different sides of the same city in China tend to have their own names. Very territorial… ;0) Such matters of splitting cities among multiple Provinces or Prefectures should go up to a Country Manager for verification and authorization.
All this, I submit to you as a basic approach for our imminent map raid perhaps exclusively. Or would it be better to only use the Prefecture name (at least) and allow locals to modify as needed (requiring unlocks in the future for virtually all Map Raid-created/updated segments?) That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me anyway…
I see another forum thread begging Waze to grant China a Province field, much like the US’s State field… and that may be coming down the pipe soon, but even then, if you already have a 2-name city system… that can easily be altered from Prefecture, Province to County/City/District, Prefecture or simply drop the Province and have Prefecture alone for rural areas… but then you’d already have in place City, Prefecture and District, Prefecture for 70% of your segments without having to change anything else other than add the Province field. It would become a much less daunting upgrade as all the city layers would already exist in their proper places- only tweaked a bit shift over the Province to its own field.
Thoughts? Feedback, Criticisms, Suggestions? - What should we do? “No City” everything? At least enter the Provinces so there’s that layer existing on everything? Do as I propose and implement 2-name to get a solid Waze city layer properly established?
Thanks for your quick responses, We begin work with or without your guidance throughout all of China in less than 21 hours. 
Thanks for putting that together.
I’ve no prior knowledge of China’s naming system but I’m all for laying down some guidelines so we have some consistency that all editors can follow.
I have been assigned Nanchong in the province of Sichuan for the mapraid.
Having looked into this in more detail I see it’s a prefecture-level city (i.e. large) therefore I agree it would be better to adopt a 2-name system and break this down into the 3 City Districts; e.g. Gaoping, Nanchong
I’m not sure if the map raid organizer was following this thread, but he came down with a verdict for the purposes of our mapraid. Pretty simple:
Concerning what a “duplication” means… I was given a perfect example from the start. I was assigned to Lishui, China with PL - but the first selection for that is Lishui City in Nanjing Prefecture in Jiangsu Province… not to be confused with my assignment for cities in Lishui Prefecture in Zhejiang Province - so I believe my work will all be considered possible duplications to distinguish between the Lishui City and the Cities in Lishui Prefecture.
When working a city, it might be good to at least do a search for your prefecture and then your city in Waze search to see if a duplication already exists elsewhere. If not, simply use the City name: Chinese version first, then in English as exampled above. Street names in Chinese unless extending a segment already in English, English should be reserved for alt names for the street fields… that is if you can find a legal map that you can read/copy/paste that information at all, I’m still working on that. If you cannot read/write in Chinese, just click “No name” for the street and keep creating roads without that information. Having as many well-connected major roads as possible even with no information is better than no roads at all.
good luck everyone
Hello all. For city naming in China, I’ve found the Google Map can be a good source of information. As City/District’s name is clearly stated on map at “500m Scaled” zoom level. The district boundary will shows up by clicking the District Name. And the road names are well translated too. (Reminder the english road name should in Alt name as stated by map raid organizer)
For detail road layout, I suggest we can use Baidu Map as the reference as it has more complex road layout compare to Google Map. Furthermore, their version of “Street View” is available at many urban areas too.
Hope these information helps. 
We’re just having this discussion about Baidu maps in the map raid as well… and we must just be sure not to copy information from it, just like Google Maps and Open Street Maps. Information must be derived from official documents and not 3rd party sources with copyrights that could be infringed. We wouldn’t want to have another copyright infringement and be forced to delete all Chinese roads in Waze because someone violated copyright infringements.
Btw, 市 and 区 should be omitted.
Hello all,
Just wonder is HQ running city name clean up on road segments at moment? Because I noticed nearly half of the road segments in Shantou 汕头’s have been reset to “No City”…
Regards,
Chuan
Could the city name clean up be put down to an enthusiastic editor during the recent mapraid who interpreted the naming of cities incorrectly? (And therefore set Shantou 汕头 to No City)
Ian.
That could be the case. As part of those No City area were edited during mapraid. I can put the city name again. But before I do that, just wonder if we have come to conclusion on City Name naming? I’ve been browsing through this forum and the wiki, but still I can’t find a firm guidance about it yet.
I noticed the city name of 上海Shanghai and 厦门Xiamen have been changed too during this city name clean up. It is either become No City or a city name with only shows district name. Eg:city name changed from “上海市杨浦区 Yangpu, Shanghai” into “杨浦区 Yangpu” Is this the current city naming system we going to use in China? Will this naming system decrease the searchability, where different cities having the same district name? Any one can advice?
Cheers,
Chuan
Hi Chuan,
I think it’s a case of wait for Leo to get back from his holiday’s and he’ll be the best person to advise us.
Regards,
Ian
Sorry I didn’t bring my laptop with me on holiday but u can post your request n permalink here the city name in doubt. I’ll try to get back to you as sooooon as I can.
Sent from my XT890 using Tapatalk
Hello Leo,
These are some example regarding the city name:
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Previously: (上海市静安区Jing’an, Shanghai); Now: (静安区 Jing’an)Permalink
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Previously: (厦门市海沧区 Haicang, Xiamen); Now: (海沧区 Haicang) Permalink
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Previously: (汕头市龙湖区 Longhu, Shantou); Now: (no city) Permalink
I think all these changes took place 2days ago (30th July). Are we going to stick with this simplified naming system? I am ok with it, if It doesn’t affect the searchability Waze.
Thanks.
Regards,
Chuan
Please find my answer below. I’m not saying this is the best solution but as least there are something we can follow :mrgreen: :
First, 市 and 区 should be omitted.
Should be 静安 Jingan
Should be 海沧 Haicang
Should be 龙湖 Longhu
Should be 杨浦 Yangpu
If it happens, then the prefecture-level city name should be added. e.g. if in case there is two city call 杨浦 Yangpu, then the perfecture-level city name should be added in one of them, e.g. “上海杨浦 Yangpu, Shanghai”. It is not idea solution but once Waze gives China a State/Province field, Waze can help us to re-name them, just like what we have in the UK.
One more thing, if you find anyone naming the city wrongly, please send him/her a PM and direct them to this post.
Got it, I will do that~