Here are some thoughts regarding usage of addr:place (discussion specific to the UK). This tag is intended to be used instead of addr:street in cases where addresses are grouped together by something other than a street name. It is needed in part due to the rule that addr:street should always match up with a highway using the same name.

It is a problematic tag because mappers use it to represent slightly different things. Below are some of the ways I’ve seen it used (the addresses aren’t real, but are based on real examples):

(A)
name=Acme Conservatories
addr:place=Midland Garden Centre [a business that hosts other separately operated businesses]
addr:street=Cedar Lane

(B)
addr:housenumber=59
addr:place=Mulberry Court [a tower block without a street name]

(C)
addr:unit=22
addr:place=Elm Retail Park [a retail park without street names]

(D)
addr:unit=5
addr:place=Derwent Business Park [a business park that does not itself contain street names, but there is a parent street]
addr:street=Maple Way

(E)
addr:unit=10
addr:street=Hawthorn Road
addr:place=Long Lane Industrial Estate [an industrial estate with street names]

(F)
addr:housename=Manor House
addr:place=Westby [a village which does not have street names]

(G)
addr:housenumber=422
addr:street=High Street
addr:place=Beeston [any village, town or suburb]
addr:city=Nottingham

Opinions will inevitably vary on how right or wrong the different usages above are. I personally consider the last one (G) to be the most problematic. (B), (C) and maybe (F) most closely follow the usage recommended on the wiki.

… See full entry

Recently I have been experimenting with extracting UK addresses from OSM data. Where a postcode has not been tagged, I have assigned the nearest one using the OS Opendata Codepoint centroids. The nearest postcode will quite often not be the correct one, but this is sufficiently accurate for my intended use of identifying the correct city and suburb.

Having done this, I thought it would be interesting to look at which postcode areas contain the most mapped addresses, so I made a list, which I have put on the following page in case anybody else is interested: osm.wiki/User:Will_P/UK_Addresses

The Birmingham (B) postcode contains the most addresses with 80,996 tagged, followed by Colchester (CO) with 52,257 and Nottingham (NG) with 41,313. At the other end, Llandrindod Wells (LD) and, somewhat surprisingly, Sunderland (SR) only contain 9 tagged addresses.

I have also made lists for the postcode districts and sectors within postcode areas with the most mapped addresses. It should be noted that the number of addresses within these areas varies greatly, so those areas at the top of the lists are not necessarily more complete than those further down.

Having added a lot of addresses myself, its interesting to identify other places where extensive address mapping has taken place, and to look at the different styles of mapping and tagging used.

Here are the postcode districts and sectors with the most mapped addresses -

WA7 5 - Runcorn (5384 addresses)

NG9 2 - Beeston (part) and Lenton Abbey, Nottingham (5100 addresses)

BA13 3 - Westbury, Wiltshire (4987 addresses)

CV3 5 - Coventry (Cheylesmore) (4919 addresses)

NG9 3 - Bramcote and Trowell, Nottingham (4866 addresses)

B27 7 - Acocks Green, Birmingham (4857 addresses)

B11 3 - Sparkhill, Birmingham (4549 addresses)

B76 1 - Walmley, Sutton Coldfield (4441 addresses)

CO12 4 - Harwich, Essex (4315 addresses)

CB1 3 - Cambridge (south east) (4184 addresses)

CO15 4 - Clacton-on-Sea (4078 addresses)

For the last few months I’ve been focussing on surveying addresses in the NG9 (UK) postcode area. This is now largely complete: there are currently about 29950 NG9 addresses in the database (or 32800 after interpreting addr:interpolation, addr:flats and so on). There are still some areas that need work, these are difficult to survey places, such as gated streets. The largest current omission is around 100 residential addresses ‘behind the wire’ within an army base.

I have found tagging addresses quite a frustrating process and I suspect I would have ‘completed’ the NG9 addresses earlier if it had been more straightforward. Adding addresses is a time-consuming process and I’ve been keen that the data I am inputting is in a format that is actually useful. I have regularly thought about whether the tagging I have used can actually be used to reconstruct the full address, and indeed I have written a script to do this, in order to help me identify the pitfalls. For a typical numbered street things are relatively simple, but for anything more complicated it quickly becomes confusing and the wiki provides little guidance.

Below are my thoughts on some of the tagging issues I’ve encountered -

‘Sub-streets’ / dependent thoroughfares

The issue I have found most problematic is how to tag ‘sub-streets’. These are typically short streets or terraces that ‘belong’ to a ‘parent’ street but are numbered separately. These are not uncommon around where I live.

For example: 5 Warren Arms Place, Albert Avenue, Stapleford, Nottingham Unit 2, Westpoint Shopping Centre, Ranson Road, Chilwell, Nottingham

There is no established way of tagging these at the moment. Some users have suggested using the addr:full tag, but I don’t think this creates useful data, and I’d prefer not to bother if that’s really the only option.

… See full entry