I have recently started mapping in Shanghai, China. I mapped all houses in my block but there are a few things that I’m not happy with.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/31.01226/121.41077
A lot of Chinese addresses have an additional “layer” to them. There is the main road. Then blocks or parts of blocks would have a number of that street and buildings within such a block have their own numbers as well. So an example from the block would be:
鹤庆路358弄81号
which translates to something like building nr. 81, 358 Heqing road. Since Openstreetmap does not provide for this kind of extra layer, I just used 81 as a house number and named alleys inside the block with 鹤庆路358弄. That works, but it looks a bit messy, with street names all over. Also it requires a lot of streets to be named. If I wanted to add an English name, I’d have to edit all those streets. I could name only one street, but I find that inconsistent. An alternative way would be to leave the alleys unnamed and number the houses 358弄81号 instead. Which would probably look even messier. A good way would be to create an area and name it, then have the name appear once. Also, there seems to be no way to do this natively, like giving an alley or an area inside a block a number and an associated street as a tag.
Another point that I’m not satisfied with is the way I can search for addresses. Chinese addresses are sorted large to small (Province City District Road 弄 号 or Province City District Road 号. But on openstreetmap I have to look for i.e. 81 鹤庆路358弄. If I look for 鹤庆路358弄81号, I can’t find anything. Both the Chinese and the internationalized way should be allowed.
Oh, and I’m still rather new to Openstreetmap. If there’s anything I should be doing differently, please just let me know.
Regards,
Malte