I believe that city naming is very difficult to clarify on a country wide basis. Basically, because the are such wide difference is what gets incorporated in different jurisdictions the guidance almost has to change from state to state and sometimes even region to region or county to county within a state. My understanding is that other countries have clarified the issue by simply providing the list of cities that will be used in waze. I don't think that is workable for the US.

The other problem at this point is that that waze address searching seems to be in a state of flux. We should really know how the address searching is going to work before we make any changes in the way cities are defined.

I would note that the basemap import used census data and thus used the CDPs. The locals do use the CDP name where I live, but that certainly varies from location to location.

Be aware that waze can eliminate, merge or change city names en masse on the back end. There is form to enter the information. However, waze does not act on submissions unless they are verified by a high level trusted user (i.e. someone with the optional special PIN code). At this point its likely better to just ask your RC or a Champ to submit the change and verify it at the same time.

I wish we had the answer for that. But it does seem to depend on a bunch of factors. One seems to be if you are searching for an address, is the number you are searching for in Small Town also used as an address in Large City. Another is does Google have a matching address or business in its data.

I'm not advocating the use of the Google data. Nor at this point suggesting that we correct everything in Google Mapmaker. However, its just a fact that waze uses the Google data so whether there is a match matters at this point.

Say there are two nearby towns of Greenville and Franklin and they both have a 2nd Ave. In Greenville the addresses on 2nd Ave run from 0-500. In Franklin they run from 600-1500.

What happens if you search for 101 2nd Ave, Franklin?
What if there is no 101 in Greenville?
What happens if Google has an incorrect pin in Franklin for house number 101?
What happens if you search for 101 Second Ave, Greenville?
What happens if Google has an alternate street name of Second listed for Franklin but not Greenville?
What happens if Greenville is not an incorporated town, say a CDP, and Franklin is a city?
What happens if the mailing addresses for Greenville use a ZIP code for Franklin?

I doubt we can solve all these issues even if waze does take into account alternate street names.

We could probably come up with a list of things that are NOT a city. That might be worthwhile. For example -- these are just brainstorming thoughts -- could we say:

• If it doesn't have a post office, it's not a city?
• If it's not listed as a Census Designated Place (CDP), it's not a city?
• If it has no identifiable and distinct "downtown" it's not a city?
• All of the above?

In my area we have a city Waze calls "Live Oak CDP". I've never heard a local refer to Live Oak, although there is a school district by that name. There is no Live Oak post office here, that is reserved for a real town called Live Oak around 200 miles away north of Yuba City. Being unincorporated and without anything resembling a "Live Oak town center" it is perilously close to being a "neighborhood" which we do not map in Waze (right?). Finally, even if it is a valid CDP, what is the acronym "CDP" doing in the City field? My leaning for this case would be to change it to "No city". But that would be a lot of work

Fredo-p wrote:I know, for roads that border city boundaries, using the same street name with the other municipality in the alt is one method of doing so.

This wreaks havoc with Validator for parking lot roads and such that have no name. You get an alternate-name field that has a city but no street name. I've fixed a bunch of those...I'm not sure if the alternate-name field for these odd cases is really the best approach. More work to maintain them that's for sure.

WME Validator flags any segment with a null alternate street name. Say you have a parking-lot road that is maybe in San Jose, maybe in Fruitdale, or both, who knows, so you add an alt with the other city but no street name. It gets flagged. I don't know how "bad" this is, whether Validator flags it just because it is bad practice or if something worse is involved.

Alt fields with the same street name but an alternate city -- I don't know if those affect routing or not. To me this practice seems excessive on principle. If in fact it doesn't improve routing then it seems like an awful lot of work for nothing. It'd be great to know if this practice has any benefit.

On my phone right now but I do have a good suggestion/response to this issue.

It goes along with the new state template format.

Sad to see that the alt field causes issues with the routing. Also, I wasn't aware that many states have different practices on entering a city name for a road.

One simple option could be that if it has a zip code, its official. But checking state assessors office to verify a places name can also help too.

My concern are those roadways that travel along a municipalities border.

Example:
ABC Ave. travels E/W. For 10 miles, ABC ave has "Small Town" to the north and "Large City" to the south. When entering the data in the required fields, what would be name to go into the city block since this road runs along both?

My thought is that you pick one and enter the other as an alt. But if the alt is causing problems, then that would mean the alt field would require some clarification as to what should and shouldn't be placed in there.

Does the wiki on entering data into the road box contain text that states an editor should contact their local states forum for clarification on how to label roads properly?

I wonder as well. Taking my example, if a search for a business or address is on ABC Ave, but Small Town, yet ABC Ave has Large City as it's city name, how would it effect the routing vs having the other town as an alt?