Bandar Utama is shown as being under Damansara Utama. Please advise.

Hi Everyone,

I’m Edmond and a brand new mapper. I’m going to be an active part of the community because I run this neighbour-help-neighbour startup called smolpotato.com. We use OSM data and I’m here because I want to improve the accuracy of our community’s listings.

Okay, now for the question. How do I change Bandar Utama to be under Petaling Jaya?

Currently, if I search for Bandar Utama, it is listed as under Damansara Utama instead of directly under Petaling Jaya. Here’s the link: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/709554905

Previously what I did (before a community member told me that this forum exists) was to categorize Bandar Utama, Damansara Utama and Damansara Jaya as a suburb. When I did that, Bandar Utama was then correctly positioned under Petaling Jaya, not under Damansara Utama. However my change to recategorize Bandar Utama from residential area to suburb was rolled back by a community member and it now goes back to showing that Bandar Utama is under Damansara Utama.

What’s the correct way to do this? Do I categorize Damansara Utama and Damansara Jaya both as residential areas rather then suburbs? And would this fix the problem?

It’s better if I made the edits myself since I’m trying to learn the proper way. But I better ask for your advice first.

Thanks a lot in advance guys!

Cheers,
Edmond

I presume this is a Nominatim (search) returned values. The answer is quite complicated & I dont have time to do it now, but searching on the help.openstreetmap.org site for relevant answers may assist. Briefly nominatim often has to guess the likely size of different places using limited information, and this is what usually causes the type of issue you raise.

Is it possible to map exact borders of mentioned locations using boundary=administative relations? Because with location mapped just as place nodes geolocators need to guess abouth what belongs to what and often will guess wrongly.

Exact borders are really difficult to get. Most that exists are a combination of Google copy (my educated suspicion:|) and swag. It’s a long ongoing process to get the local governments to release boundary shapefiles to the public.

What if we use the reportedly depecrated is_in tag? At least that keeps Nominatim from guessing.

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Hi Edmond,

with a short look at I would say you are correct. Bandar Utama could be a suburb.
But you have also deleted the landuse residential, this may be your error.

I can also not say if this error is produced by the online editor you have used. So maybe check again the tags after your change.

The best answer may also be given to you by your local community. Maybe you ask again in the subforum “users: Malaysia” or you ask user “angys” for help, the user who changed your edits back again.

Also the additional use if the key “is_in” may help as mentioned before. It us deprecated but nominatim still supports it cause of high usage in some places.

Cheers

Thanks for the replies guys. I’ll attempt to use the is_in tag first to see if that works. If I still come across errors, I’ll progressively work my way through to the more difficult solutions. Including re-classifying Damansara Utama as a residential area (which I realise now is a mistake I made as a new mapper).

Thanks again! Your answers are super appreciated.