What is a market town?

A market town (German Markt) is a center for local trade, larger than a village, but smaller than a town. In Denmark and Northern Germany, they are called Flecken or Freiheit. They are most common in Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland, but also in Czechia (městys=small town), Lithuania and Poland (miasteczko=small town): Liste der Märkte in Bayern – Wikipedia Liste der Städte in Österreich – Wikipedia

For historical reasons, Garmisch-Partenkirchen ist the biggest market town in Bavaria with 27,000 inhabitants, but still marked as village. Villages appear on map level 12 while towns appear on map level 9. A new category of market towns or small towns appearing on level 10 or 11 would be helpful.

For those who haven’t been, Garmisch-Partenkirchen is not only fun to say, it’s a beautiful, beautiful place, and former site of the Gen Walker Hotel, a vacation destination for US troops stationed in Europe from WWII-2001 (including me!).

@FK27 - many thanks for bringing this to our attention! Without going into any rabbit holes, how do you use place= with a market town?

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Currently, tagging is inconsistent with a good potential for edit-wars.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen is the most outstanding example and a good starting point for the question: What is a town? What is a village? What is a city? This definition decides whether a place appears on the map.

How to define city/town/village and all the steps between: First, it should be defined as a settlement with a civilian majority:

size majority=military majority=clerical majority=civilian
huge city
big fortress/garrison abbey town
intermediate market town
medium fort monastery village
small outpost hermitage hamlet

In Britan, a city is defined a settlement with cathedral. In Germany, it is defined as a settlement with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Combining these national definitions, a city could be defined as having at least two of four properties:

  • more than 10,000 inhabitants before 1850
  • seat of a bishop
  • state capital
  • university

A minor city should have at least one of four properties:

  • more than 5,000 inhabitants before 1850
  • seat of a bishop
  • state capital
  • university

Historically, some towns were so important that they had their own members of parliament in England (so called “rotten boroughs”). Should they be mapped as rotten city?

How to distinguish town and market_town (or minor_town) beyond their legal definition (which historically included city walls and elected councils)?

  • district courthouse (by the way, Virginia courthouses are located somewhere in the forest)
  • high school
    both / one of them?

Garmisch-Partenkirchen has a high school since 1913, its establishment could be used as inofficial indicator when a settlement turned into a town.

How to distinguish village and hamlet?

  • administration / council
  • church
  • elementary school

This is just a draft, feel free to develop it further. OHM has grown significantly, so it is possible to try some new features which are not part of OSM.

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Love this detail! Tagging for human settlements is a topic that has been well-covered elsewhere, including New England and Germany (OSM community mega-thread I can’t find right now), so I’m going to steer clear, but that’s a great background.