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[PAGE UPDATE] City names (in Road name, Road name/city name)

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The "City names on segments" section of the USA Road names article and the Introduction of the USA Road names / city names article both state that the primary name field should be set to a given city name only "within the boundaries of the city polygon".

This guidance is problematic for four reasons:
  • It can be recursive. In my experience, the city polygon can (at least sometimes) be generated automatically based on the primary-name settings of segments. We can't derive the primary city name from the polygon if the polygon is derived from the primary city name.
  • It does not allow for situations where the city polygon may be incorrect.
  • It may exclude developed but unincorporated portions of a city that visiting drivers as well as the Post Office would consider part of that city.
  • Read literally, it prohibits use of the city field for populated places for which Waze, for whatever reason, does not have a city polygon.
I'd like to recommend the following changes in red. In "Road names":
To keep city names from sprawling over too wide an area in the Waze app, in WME and LiveMap, a city name should only be used as a primary name onfor segments details within the boundaries of the city polygon located in incorporated areas of the city, or in unincorporated but developed zones that visiting drivers would likely associate with the city. That means many addresses on the map are in these “no city” areas, particularly in rural regions.
In "Road names / city names":
To keep city names from sprawling over too wide an area in the Waze app, WME, and Live Map, editors follow standards of placing the city name on segment details only within the boundaries of the city polygon incorporated city and/or developed zones that visiting drivers would likely associate with the city (provided the city name is corroborated by US Postal Service addressing). That means many addresses on the map are in these “no city” areas, particularly in rural regions.
This guidance improvement may appear to encourage city smudging, but I don't think this is a serious concern, for two reasons: (1) there are plenty of unincorporated towns already shown on the Waze map with boundaries established by the census bureau that may already be somewhat arbitrary, and there is no reason for us to be chained strictly to whatever the bureau thinks; and (2) the language "developed zones that visiting drivers would likely associate with the city" is anti-smudging by definition.

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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
I agree that we should remove "within the boundaries of the city polygon" language, because yeah, it puts the cart before the horse for unlocked polygons or no polygons, and locked polygons are ten years old (imported with basemap in 2009) and could be out of date due to annexation or deannexation.

We were discussing on Discord the differences among states in defining what a city is, and specifically the usefulness of treating census-designated places as cities. Census-designated places represent closely settled, unincorporated communities that are locally recognized and identified by name. We basically came down to the fact that because each state makes its own laws regarding incorporation of cities, towns, villages, townships, boroughs or whatever else they want to call them, the editors there will have to make their own decision on whether or how to map CDPs, unincorporated areas that aren't CDPs, and even incorporated areas.

So while I would love a good national guidance statement about this, I really think we have to make it more local, just because every state is different in regard to this. So I'd propose:
Modified road names paragraph wrote:To keep city names from sprawling over too wide an area in the Waze app, in WME and LiveMap, a city name should only be used as a primary name onfor segments details within the boundaries of the city polygon located in areas determined by local leadership to be displayed as cities on the map, such as incorporated cities, villages, townships, boroughs, census-designated places, etc., depending on the state. That may means many addresses on the map are in these “no city” areas, particularly in rural regions.
Modified city names paragraph wrote:To keep city names from sprawling over too wide an area in the Waze app, WME, and Live Map, editors follow standards of placing the city name on segment details only within the boundaries of the city polygon area determined by local leadership to be displayed as a city on the map, such as an incorporated city, village, township, borough, census-designated place, etc., depending on the state. That may means many addresses on the map are in these “no city” areas, particularly in rural regions.
One more thing:
DwarfLord wrote:there are plenty of unincorporated towns already shown on the Waze map with boundaries established by the census bureau that may already be somewhat arbitrary, and there is no reason for us to be chained strictly to whatever the bureau thinks
I'm assuming that you refer to CDPs here (those seem to be the imported unincorporated areas). CDP boundaries are arbitrary like FC is arbitrary, FWIW. Someone in the government, who is paid to determine these things, applied detailed criteria and made a decision. If CDPs are useful in general in one's state, their boundaries are worth following, rather than what we might think a visiting driver might think is a city.
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Last edited by Inactive user -1697532064- on Wed May 22, 2019 3:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
DwarfLord wrote: Could we go so far, at a national level, as to say that a USPS name is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for mapping a city using segments' primary name field?
At least in my state, I know of many incorporated villages whose names are not used by the USPS. Those should definitely be mapped. I have argued in the past that in Ohio, CDPs that don't appear in postal addresses should not be mapped, but I am not so sure now. It doesn't hurt to have them on the map, especially where their boundaries are marked on road signs. Also, I guess I don't feel like the assigning of city names to ZIP codes by the postal service is a corroboration of the existence of a populated place, since their primary purpose is improved routing of mail.
herrchin wrote: Kartographer: when you transpose to the wiki, a grammatical error snuck into both places as "That may means many addresses...".
I struck through the s when I first posted this, but it's hard to see. And everyone here seems to think my name has ph in it ;)
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
I understand your proposal and have wondered about this too. One counter-example I have is Finneytown, Ohio, a CDP with more than 12,000 inhabitants. USPS discourages the use of this name in favor of Cincinnati, but it is well known by locals and used on local businesses. It's worth having on the map, although not in place addresses. I even argued with a Cincy editor for changing all the place addresses to Cincinnati; he wanted to keep them as Finneytown. Is discouragement corroboration of existence?
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
DwarfLord wrote:The zip code finder I linked previously spits out:

FINNEYTOWN OH 45224
FINNEYTOWN OH 45231

So the USPS corroborates the town name. Under my suggestion, this would mean that the name Finneytown could not be ruled out based on USPS data alone but perhaps there could be other reasons to disallow it on the Waze map.

How does the USPS discourage the use of the name Finneytown? I'm wondering how the USPS stance manifests. The USPS town-to-zip-code finder website isn't displaying anything that looks like discouragement.

One example I'm familiar with is the Santa Barbara airport property. The Santa Barbara airport is legally and formally part of the incorporated city of Santa Barbara, even though it shares no land connection with the rest of Santa Barbara (long story). Meanwhile, its zip code is that of the adjacent town, Goleta, CA 93117. You could say that Goleta "owns" that zip code, but in reality the USPS happily recognizes Santa Barbara, CA 93117. I've never heard anyone say that the USPS doesn't want people using the city name Santa Barbara for things going to 93117, at least not to the airport.
I use the city finder by ZIP code, which serves a different purpose. The ZIP code finder by city is very inclusive, because USPS is trying to help people assign a ZIP code to an address based on which city they think it's in. The tool I use, which is what USGB links to, is for finding out what's the correct city name to use. So if you look up 45231 with that, for example, you get
ZIP Code™ 45231 is in:
CINCINNATI, OH

You could also use these for the city:
MOUNT HEALTHY, OH
WYOMING, OH

But don't use these:
FINNEYTOWN, OH
N COLLEGE HL, OH
If you look up 93117, Santa Barbara is under the "you could also use these" heading.
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
DrivingWithBill wrote: Now the added complexity becomes with many roads having alt names and multiple possible cities what to do? Is waze even able to handle if we did all the alt names on a segment even if it is potentially 7 different cities. Where is the line?
A street can have at least 12 alt names (didn't try more), but really the city question comes down to three different purposes:
  1. Which city labels should be displayed on the map and where?
  2. Which street/city combinations should be supported in address and place search?
  3. Which cities should be listed in report locations?
It's pretty clear that to support address and place searching (purpose 2), we need to have USPS cities listed somewhere. People almost always give residential addresses based on what's written on their mail. That will be a preferred city or another recognized city, so the guidance on the city names page says to add alt names to segments based on the preferred city given by the USPS for the ZIP code that the address belongs to, if that city is not in the primary name. To determine what that is, I'm pretty sure that the USPS routes give more accurate information (actual USPS mail routes) than the red outlined areas (ZIP code tabulation areas combined for simplified statistics by the Census Bureau), so I just use the mail routes. I understand that the USPS is not the ultimate authority on addresses; that actually rests with local governments, and sometimes the USPS can be out of date on new addresses.

Businesses almost always list their address with the preferred city given by the USPS or another city recognized by the USPS. For places, just use the city that they give for their address.

So in the case of Queens, to me it seems like the current guidance on the city names page is sufficient: Just add alt names with the preferred postal cities of each ZIP code on each street that they serve. However, like with anything related to cities, your local guidance may supersede that. CDPs and hamlets (in NYS) are both unincorporated areas, but CDPs are defined by the census bureau, and AFAIK hamlets are defined informally. For primary names it's even simpler (though I'm not a local, and local guidance may differ): All land in NYC is incorporated into one of the five boroughs, so all primary street names in Queens should use Queens.

Back to DL's amended proposal:
DwarfLord wrote: Could we go so far, at a national level, as to say that a USPS name is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for mapping a city using segments' primary name field?
By USPS name, you don't mean existence as a preferred or other recognized name for a ZIP code but rather simply whether putting the city and state into the ZIP code finder by city and state tool spits out a result?

I also did some test searching with address and neighborhoods, and it's nice to see that Google's fuzzy searching supports any form of search we throw at it, basically, as long as the street has a nearby on it, so it makes me worry less about the search aspects of whether or not to put certain city names in the primary field. You can even search by neighborhood, like Fruit Belt, NY or Franklinton, OH, and you get a Waze result in the right place.

@DL, it seems like with Timberlane and Gretna, Google search is converting Timberlane into Gretna as the preferred address, then passing that over to Waze.
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
DwarfLord wrote:The idea was that, when faced with the question of whether it's a "neighborhood" or a "bona fide city", a necessary (but not sufficient!) condition would be if USPS simply recognizes the name in any context, even a deprecated context.
USPS doesn't recognize many villages (small incorporated local government units) in Ohio. I imagine this is true in other states as well. In my opinion, anything that's incorporated should be mapped, but I can get behind using incorporation or USPS recognition as a minimum standard, at least for my state. Again though, the rules about cities are so different across states, I don't know how well this idea can work in other states.
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
russblau wrote:Virginia has adopted a guideline that if the USPS name for addresses on a given segment is different from the primary city name on that segment (including "No city" as a primary name), then the USPS name should be added as an alternate name.

Given that we're unlikely to reach any nationwide consensus on primary city names due to state-to-state differences in how local governments are organized, how about adopting the Virginia guideline instead? A segment can have multiple alternate names, corresponding to variations on the city name accepted by USPS, so that's not a problem. If one of them isn't commonly used and no one ever searches for it, there's no harm done. But if a user does search for "123 Jones St, University, LA" for some reason, we'd have it on the map as an alternate name and the search would go to the correct location.

Note that the existing city name guidance only covers segments with "No city" as the primary name, so it doesn't cover situations like Queens where the primary USPS "city" name is not the same as the municipality (in this case, borough) name.
Absolutely. I was not sure why the current alt name guidance was limited to "no city" segments and kind of forgot about it when I gave my answer above. Maybe because in city disagreement areas Google will match the USPS name searched to the primary city of the Waze segment most of the time without an alt name. Still, that doesn't mean it will match every time, and it can still be confusing for folks who search their postal address and then see the redirect with a different city. Also, a HN could be duplicated across a large city or borough (IIRC this has been a problem in Brooklyn), and it doesn't hurt to just put the USPS name on every segment. It's also a lot easier to do now, thanks to your script and others.
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
Yeah, that's a good point. There's a similar situation in Ohio with a CDP and a village called Bainbridge. The village was labeled in Waze as Bainbridge (2), since renamed, after the CDP was renamed to Bainbridge Township. And as for the military base city name hack, I thought about that but forgot to mention it. They have their own rules, of course, and we can mention that.

So can we propose some specific text to evaluate, maybe something like these?
Again modified road names paragraph wrote:To keep city names from sprawling over too wide an area in the Waze app, in WME and LiveMap, a city name should only be used as a primary name onfor segments details within the boundaries of the city polygon located in areas determined by local leadership to be displayed as cities on the map. This generally includes incorporated cities, towns, villages, etc., as well as census-designated or other unincorporated places recognized as city names by the USPS, but rules vary by state. That may means many addresses on the map are in these “no city” areas, particularly in rural regions.
and
Again modified city names paragraph wrote:To keep city names from sprawling over too wide an area in the Waze app, WME, and Live Map, editors follow standards of placing the city name on segment details only within the boundaries of the city polygon area determined by local leadership to be displayed as a city on the map. This is generally an incorporated area like a city, town, village, etc., but could also be a census-designated or other unincorporated place with a name recognized by the USPS; rules vary by state. That may means many addresses on the map are in these “no city” areas, particularly in rural regions.
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
Looks like we reached consensus here, so I have made the changes. As indicated above, I included "except for within [[Military Bases|military bases]]" as an exception in the language in each section.
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Post by DrivingWithBill
Newbie here, and still trying to get up to speed on the whole "City" issue. This has been something I am trying to better understand and

A couple of questions:
-Can we define or link better to what is the City Polygon, I dont have a clue on that topic?
-It sounds like there are a couple of different types of cities being thrown around: municipal, CDP and USPS, are there others that commonly get used?
-Is there a limit to the number of alternative cities that can be used for one location?
-Is there a better way to see the waze city limits in the editor?

I have recently been trying to look at this issue in New York, as where I live the division of the communities ranges from: City, Town, Villages and Hamlets (I guess a CPD). This appears to be a long standing challenge for the state.


Looking at Queens recently I saw that some of the Postal/Neighborhood names were being utilized. However reviewing zip codes for Queens, there are over 20 recommended names, and many more if you go with the other ones, and this is not event getting into the whole "Avoid" group. The number of possible city names for a location could quickly grow. Any suggestions?

Further, looking out on Long Island, Suffolk Countyhas a really useful GIS for this types of topics, with many municipal boundaries available. Reviewing the zip codes of Suffolk County, it appears that the almost all the ZIp Code cities reflect municipal names, while municipalities may not reflect the USPS names. It is quickly apparent that none of these cleanly align and that neither is really a good standard

Now the added complexity becomes with many roads having alt names and multiple possible cities what to do? Is waze even able to handle if we did all the alt names on a segment even if it is potentially 7 different cities. Where is the line?
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