We do have GIS maps by county, issued by NJDOT, that include many unincorporated place names - not just towns - but my biggest issue with this is that it doesn't make clear what the extent/boundary of any of these name are.

Question: Is there a fairly simple city-naming guideline for townships that covers like 90% or more of the map accurately enough for our purposes? With any resolution to city naming in townships, I think its important to absolutely minimize the amount of arbitration having to be done by SMs or the RC, and any AM with an area in the state should be able to figure out why a particular primary city name was assigned without having to ask people why they did what they did.

That's good.

It does have many conflicts though. In such a case though, I would imagine the most commonly known one gets to keep the name and the others have to revert to a postal or township name, whichever is more appropriate (Case study: check out zip code 08540 - Princeton, which spans parts of 4 different municipalities in 3 different counties)

A sub city level would be perfect if we could get it. It looks like Google actually does that already - try searching for Colonia, NJ and observe your results.

Sounds good to me.

I would leave the paragraph about roads that straddle borders, or at the very least reduce the that thought down to a sentence or so.

Most simply, when trying to determine the name of a place, think, for any given road segment, if you were on it and asked a local "Where am I?", what would they tell you? That's your answer.

In past conversations, we established that the polygons generated by primary city names had meaning in their association with incorporated municipal names. That either turns out to not be the case, or at the very least is no longer the case, both of which are fine.

Anyway, the point is that a sub-city field may or may not be a solution to this problem. It may be the case that simply using CDP names as primary cities and entering municipal names (and postal names, if divergent) as alternate names turns out to be plenty sufficient. It's just not clear at the moment, and the one thing I certainly want to avoid is setting a guideline now, causing a rush on mass city name changing, only to possibly have to do it again in the near future.

In the meantime, let's worry about city names only on the immediate segments that need fixing to solve URs, and let's stick to the current city-naming guidelines to resolve that - incorporated name in the primary name, and add any other names like CDP or postal cities, if different, to the alternate names so they get matched in searches. It's not perfect, but it should be enough to solve URs while we get a more permanent solution figured out.

BTW, Metuchen is totally an incorporated borough, though completely surrounded by Edison township. Nearby Iselin and Colonia, however, are unincorporated towns within Woodbridge township.

If we have conflicting CDPs, perhaps we should use the township name to segregate them?

Example:

Middletown township in Monmouth County has a CDP called Fairview. However, there is also an incorporated borough called Fairview in Bergen County.

Conflict Resolution:
Borough: Fairview
CDP: Fairview, Middletown Twp

It is 2 names in the same field, but I don't know how else to both distinguish the 2 Fairviews in NJ and show the correct information on both the map and in search results.

Do you have a link to the PA standard?

This sounds good for most segments, but I'm still torn on what gets the primary city name for a road segment within a CDP whose name is different from both the local municipality name (usually township name) and the accepted city names for postal addresses.

In this situation, I don't see any major problems arising from relegating the township name into one of the alternate name rows. However, the other 2 names are less clear. Colloquially, people probably identify with the CDP name, since that's likely the reason the CDP exists. However, when searching for an address and reviewing any results returned to select from, it's not unreasonable for people to enter and expect to see the postal city name.

Case Study: Fairton, Cumberland County. A large section of Fairfield township here goes by the CDP name, Fairton, but the accepted city name for all addresses within the township is actually Bridgeton, a nearby city. Between Bridgeton and Fairton, which name is more correct to display on the map and in search results?

Another Case Study: Princeton. The 08540 zip code (USPS-accepted city name: Princeton) spans parts of 5 different townships in 3 different counties with various CDPs within it. Which primary city name is correct? Princeton, reflecting the addresses for all those roads? Or the colloquial CDPs? The township names, since they are actually in different counties?

qwaletee wrote:I don't see NJ adopting the countyname scheme.

Agreed. 99.9% (if not 100%) of the time there are duplicate township names, either all or all but 1 commonly go by some other name, typically either accepted postal city names since those are most commonly reflected in addresses, or local CDP names.