the DWG received three coordinated complaints from people in the Suburb of “Harris Park” that their suburb wasn’t shown on the map, but rather the Neighbourhood of “Little India”, making various questionable statements about the situation.
Upon clarifying the situation describing what Carto displays when (zoom levels and such), one of the complaintants stated, that Wikipedia was rendering the situation differently.
While neither the DWG nor OSM in general has any say about what other renderers do, I have contacted the mapper, that created the place=neighbourhoodnode, @arctic-rocinante, asking whether loc_name wouldn’t be more fitting towards the situation, because both the changeset comment and the first complaint received made it sound like “It is a small area (1 block) within the suburb of Harris Park, locally known by that name.”
Further reading in the changeset comments will reveal that a-r thinks it could be an official name due to the city of Parramatta installing several signs “Welcome to Little India” which have sparked a change.org petition because “they are an eyesore”.
My personal opinion about the latter and the wording of the complaints we received shall not change the fact that the local OSM community should be having the final say on this situation.
I am happy to keeping the tagging as is, while that would carry with it a question towards Wikimedia why they would render a neighbourhood over a suburb label.
Changing the name to loc_name (and not having a name at all), would preserve the possibility to search for the place and would satisfy the compaintants, yet we shouldn’t be doing that if it was factually wrong (the placename being official).
Looking forward to everyones input on this.
Update 2025-05-10 09:58 CEST: By shear chance, Parramatta’s Councillor for the Rose Hill Ward seems to have been put in the loop by one of the complaintants and we received a message from them. I took the liberty to ask for their stance on the officiality of Little India’s name, will update once a reply comes in.
I would point out that there is an OSMF local chapter for Australia and Oceania in general that could be brought in to the loop particularly considering that building contacts with local authorities is something they could profit more from than the DWG.
Good question. I didn’t put a huge amount of thought into the place=neighbourhood choice to be honest. I’d noticed Sydney’s Chinatown was mapped this way, and it felt like an analogous situation.
Regardless, it does seem like Wikimedia maps is doing a poor job here. The OSM Wiki clearly has place=neighbourhood below place=suburb in the hierarchy, yet Wikimedia maps is giving neighbourhood rendering precedence. I can understand why the complainants aren’t happy with the end result.
To my surprise we have 86 place=neighbourhood tags in Sydney, being used for
Officially designated “Urban Place” names through the Geographic Names Board. Our suburbs all have official boundaries but sometimes a smaller area within a suburb may have another name and we have used place=neighbourhood for these.
“Estates”. These are residential developments within a suburb where the developer has used a particular name for a few blocks of houses all done as part of the development.
Based on the place=* documentation on the wiki, I think both of these are approriate for place=neighbourhood.
Chinatown, Koreatown, Thai town. These are more names likely used to drive visitors, but still have become very commonly used by locals, in publications, in the media, so I think place=neighbourhood is also correct here.
I’ve never visited Little India in Harris Park, but based on what we do for “Chinatown, Koreatown and Thai Town” in the CDB,place=neighbourhood seems correct. If there is signage from the local council, then I would definitely use name and not loc_name.
Seems like the main issue is that Wikipedia’s maps aren’t using the correct place hierachy per Key:place - OpenStreetMap Wiki
I could only find a couple of signs (Google Street View) at each end of a short section of Marion Street in Harris Park. Maybe an alternative is a local name for a short section of the street?
The consensus seems to be that it’s a Wikimedia maps rendering issue so not really anything the DWG can change. I suspect if the Little India point was moved to the north then Harris Park would also render on the wikimedia map, but of course that is “tagging for someone else’s renderer”!
I’d have to agree with the consensus, it’s signed, it’s a pretty clear boundary based on the signage too, and external data consumers rendering things wrong isn’t our problem.
I agree with the use of place=neighbourhood considering the precedent with similar precincts. Just to play devils advocate; the official purpose of the “Little India” name seems to be a promotional mechanism for the Indian-themed businesses. Maybe a viable alternative would be to name the landuse=retail area instead?
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