Tag:place=city - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Tag:place=city
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Tag:place=city
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place
city
Description
The largest urban settlement or settlements within the territory.
Rendering in
OSM Carto
Group:
places
Used on these
elements
Useful combination
name
=*
population
=*
See also
place
town
place
suburb
Status:
de facto
place
city
$1%
$1%
$1%
$1%
More details at tag
info
Tools for this tag
taginfo
AD
AT
BE
BR
BY
CH
CN
CZ
DE
DK
FI
FR
GB
GR
HU
IE (N+S)
IN
IR
IT
LI
LU
JP
KP
KR
NL
NO
PL
PT
RU
ES
AR
MX
CO
BO
CL
EC
PY
PE
UY
VE
TW
UA
US
VN
overpass-turbo
QLever
Sophox
Postpass via overpass-turbo
OSM Tag History
StyleInfo
Use the
place
city
tag
to identify the largest settlement or settlements within a territory, including national, state and provincial capitals, and other major conurbations.
Contents
How to map
1.1
Mapping cities as areas
Example
place
city
vs
place
town
The case of Portugal
See also
External links
How to map
Place a
node
at the center of the city, like the central square, a central administrative or religious building or a central road junction and tag it
place
city
The following should ideally all be included for a city:
name
=*
: for the name of the city in the primary language for the territory.
population
=*
: for the population of the city or metropolitan area.
wikipedia
=*
: Link to the
Wikipedia
article in the primary language for the city.
wikidata
=*
: Link to the data set item in
Wikidata
for this city.
capital
yes
for the capital city of the country.
Use
name:fr
=*
name:ar
=*
etc for the name of the city in other languages.
Consider also creating nodes for suburbs and neighbourhoods using
place
suburb
and
place
neighbourhood
Mapping cities as areas
Some mappers map cities with an
area
instead of using a node. Cities often do not have a
verifiable
outline though and different interpretations of the meaning of areas representing populated places exist - more details can be found on
Key:place
§ Mapping populated places as areas
. This method also loses the information on the city center which is important for data users, in particular for routing. Data users should not expect the area geometries of cities to have a particular meaning. An administrative "city limit" boundary is often mapped separately as a
boundary
relation tagged with
boundary
administrative
admin_level
=*
. Assure the
admin_level
=*
is correct for a "city" in that country.
border_type
city
$1%
$1%
$1%
$1%
More details at tag
info
border_type=city
If you know
places with this tag
, verify if it could be tagged with another tag.
Automated edits are
strongly discouraged
unless
you really know what you are doing
Example
place
city
name
بغداد
capital
yes
name:ar
بغداد
name:de
Bagdad
name:en
Baghdad
name:fr
Bagdad
place
city
vs
place
town
Historically, in England, where the settlement tags developed, a
"town" had a public market
amenity
marketplace
), while a "city" also had a cathedral and a
royal charter
from the monarchy. But some settlements which were recognised as cities in earlier times are now smaller than some towns. Since the range of city population is wide, it is helpful to add the tag
population
=*
to describe the population of the urban area, when possible.
In some regions, the population of settlements is used to differentiate
place
town
and
place
city
, but this practice varies between countries. In sparsely populated regions, many settlements tagged
place
city
are less populous than in regions with high population density.
As of mid 2019, 63% of
place
city
have a
population
=*
tag, of which the median value is 130,000, and 95% of
place
city
have a
population
=*
value over 20,000. However, 13% have a
population
=*
value between 20,000 and 50,000.
The case of Portugal
In 2021, the Portuguese OSM community
voted a standardisation
based on official and verifiable data. In Portugal, cities, towns and villages are determined by law, which obeys to clearly defined criteria. The approved definition of places in Portugal can be found
here
This option of basing
place
city
and
place
town
on verifiable data, instead of ambiguous terms like "big", "important" or volatile data like population, gave rise to some discussion, as can be seen in various places of OSM's community:
Talk:Tag:place=city#National folklore ruins the usefulness of place=city
(and the entire page)
Since OSM carto considers all cities without
population
=*
tag has having 100,000 people, and because Portugal only has four cities above that number, all cities in Portugal have their official population values, so they can be hierarchically presented in the map. Thus, the rendering of places on the map is left to renders, which should have the liberty to decide what's important to render.
See also
place
town
- between a
place
city
and a
place
village
in size.
place
suburb
- a part of a city or town, with a well-known name and often a distinct identity
External links
Glossary:City
Related terms
: ‹
place
› ‹
metropolis
› ‹
center
› ‹
city
› ‹
capital
› ‹
urban
Retrieved from "
Categories
Tag descriptions for group "places"
Tag descriptions for key "place"
Tag descriptions
Tag descriptions by value
Tag descriptions with status "de facto"
Tags claimed to be for nodes, areas and relations
Places
Tagging Mistakes
Hidden categories:
Pages unavailable in Dutch
Item with no description in language FI
Item with no description in language NL
Item with no description in language HU
Item with no description in language ZH-HANS
Item with no description in language ZH-HANT
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