Tag:amenity=townhall
 amenity = townhall
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A townhall serves as a community administrative center or meeting place. 
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| Group: amenities |
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Status: approved
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Use this for a village, town or city townhall, which is often the seat of the mayor, or may be merely a community meeting place.
A townhall is not necessarily used (or having ever been used) for administrative function. The tag is also used for a "village hall", commonly in UK villages, and used for community events such as fundraising and Discos.
The same tag can be used for a "City hall", a building where the principal offices of a city administration are located. Another term is "Municipal hall", where the main offices of a municipal administration are Located.
This tag is for the current townhall function.
How to map
Set a node or draw as an area along the townhall outline. Add the tag amenity=townhall and name=*.
In UK, please also specify the type, townhall:type=village for a municipial office of a village or townhall:type=city for the town hall of a town.
Other countries may have other townhall types to distinguish the main hall of the municipality, or one of its annexes with more limited services (e.g. in suburbs of large cities, or in remote settlements separated by rural areas, or in urbanized exclaves), or with more specialized services.
While a former suggestion was for adding the building=civic tag, you should consider adding the more specific building=townhall. Both tags can also be used for former townhalls (built as townhalls but not used as such any more).
Name
Whether one should use the name=* on a townhall as "Townhall of X-town" is open to debate.[1]
The main reason against this would be that this is deemed as "descriptive" rather than a proper name.
One of the use case of such practice is when the townhall is called different ways (e.g. Hôtel de ville, Mairie principale, Mairie de quartier, etc). townhall:type=* has been suggested to answer that need (or in that case, to use a specific french suffix as it’s already the case for school:FR=*).
Uses around the world
In Indonesia, in village-level these are called balai desa and in city-level these are called balai kota.
See also
- amenity=community_centre - a place mostly used for local events and festivities, and not used for administrative purposes
- office=government - An office of a (supra)national, regional or local government agency or department
- place=municipality