Key:addr:city

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Public-images-osm logo.svg addr:city
Lillerod.jpg
Description
The name of the largest settlement (city / town / other) that is included in the address. Show/edit corresponding data item.
Group: addresses
Used on these elements
may be used on nodesmay be used on waysmay be used on areas (and multipolygon relations)may be used on relations
Status: de factoPage for proposal

The postal city, also called the place of destination, is the name of the city that appears in the postal address of an address node, point of interest, or building.

How to tag

Add addr:city=* to the same feature you are tagging with addr:housenumber=*, addr:street=*, etc. Some countries additionally distinguish other kinds of administrative units as part of the standard address format, requiring other subkeys of addr=*, such as addr:region=*, addr:state=*, addr:province=*, addr:town=*, and addr:quarter=*.

If you are tagging a private mailbox (amenity=letter_box), use post:city=* instead of addr:city=*, to help distinguish the mailbox from the residence that it serves.

Regional variations

The meaning of this key differs from country to country. In some countries, the postal city is guaranteed to match the name=* tag of the smallest boundary=administrative relation containing the feature, so it is less common to tag it explicitly. However, in other countries, the postal city corresponds to the name of the post office that serves the area. It is not guaranteed to be the name of the containing city or even a city at all. This makes it useful to tag addr:city=* explicitly even when it does match the containing administrative boundary's name, so that mappers and data consumers can distinguish such coincidences from missing postal city data.

United States

A post office's sign usually indicates the recommended postal cities and ZIP codes served by the post office.

The postal service city is the name of the USPS post office that serves the address' ZIP code (addr:postcode=*). [1] Many imports have omitted addr:city=*, assuming that data consumers would infer it from the smallest surrounding administrative boundary. However, addresses very often break this assumption. For example, if an address is located in a village without its own post office or ZIP code, the USPS usually does not accept the village's name. Mail bearing an unacceptable postal service city may be returned to the sender.

If the address is served by a post office station, post office branch, or village post office, the USPS prefers the name of the main post office but may accept the local post office's name as an alternative. For example, the main post office is located downtown and named after the metropolitan area's principal city, while the local post office is named after the suburb that it serves. Some residents and business owners prefer one name over another because of the name's familiarity or reputation. Their preference may be reflected on their signage, receipts, or official website. For example, a long-running children's TV show memorably advertised its studio's address as being in the 02134 ZIP code of Boston, which is an acceptable alternative to the recommended city name of Allston. If possible, try to respect this preference when mapping an address. If you cannot easily determine the preference, pick any of the acceptable names to at least prevent data consumers from having to guess based on the ZIP code.

A geocoder should not assume a one-to-one relationship between postal cities and ZIP codes. It is inadvisable to use the locations of individual addr:city=* tags alone to derive "postal city polygons", because this choice of names may result in holes and other anomalies. However, a geocoder can improve the relevance of its results by considering the full set of postal cities that have been tagged in conjunction with a given ZIP code.

Possible tagging mistakes

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!

See also