I see growing numbers for tags post:city, post:street etc. on taginfo with also some software support, but couldn’t find a wiki page or other documentation.
What is this supposed to mean? How is it different from addr:* and object:* for addresses and near-addresses?
It doesn’t have its own wikipage, you can find an explanation in Tag:amenity=letter_box - OpenStreetMap Wiki
It’s mostly used for indicating the postal address the letter box is for.
Well, skip that. It’s described under amenity=letter_box and is supposed to give the incoming mail address for this box.
This effectively leads to duplication of building addresses and it will be interesting to see how these addresses will be kept in sync.
Be careful - This must not be the case. This is why we also have object:* addresses and the like.
Postal addresses, especially on POIs, may not be the physical address. This is why they should be in different tags.
addr:* is tagging the physical address of the object the tags are on. So they typically fit into the address hierarchy of the surrounding objects.
When you start adding postal addresses there is no way to validate them. With addr:* tags you can look for a addr:street/addr:place which must be near somewhere. Thats not the case for postal addresses which might even not have a street but only a p.o. box …
So pure postal addresses should not be in addr:* tags.
Flo
Views on this vary across OSM users and data consumers.
E.g. the Nominatim maintainer thinks addr:city should be used for precisely the postal city: Special cases of distinct civil and postal addresses city names - #13 by lonvia - from which it would logically follow that addr:street should be used for the postal address like Rural Route 1.
The way I understand it,
addr:* - associated with lat/lon, a point you can navigate to (in Austria assigned by the municipality and recorded in the address register, usually a place where people either live or work and where mail gets delivered to)
object:* - a location “near” the given geographical address (i.e. references an addr:*), to give the location of a place that doesn’t have an address itself (e.g. public phone)
post:* - the address(es) a private letter box receives mail for (normally this would reference one or more addr:* nearby as letter boxes are typically around the recipients house)
contact:* - a geographical or postal only (PO box) address that can be anywhere
In Austria, the address is both the admin and postal address (there are minor distinctions to resolve ambiguities, but generally the postal service will accept either the municipality or the settlement name in address:city).
In other words, if you want to go there, use addr or object. If you want to write a letter, contact takes priority over address.
In rural areas it’s common that your letterbox is far away from your actual address, for example in the nearby village or at some intersection along the route of the post car.