GeoNames Forum

The data currently in the geonames dataset is useful, but only up to a point. It would be great if neighborhoods, boroughs, districts, sections, etc. were collected as places as well. It would be most useful if they had boundaries so one could e.g. check which neighborhood a given lat/lng is in.

Then, for instance, "Upper East Side" would be a place in the dataset, lying within New York, New York, USA. There are many more examples of this for virtually every major city in the US at least.

Thoughts?

Hmm. I looked around more and see that some cities have places within them that are designated "section of populated place". This is probably closer to what I'm talking about, but is still treated as a point rather than a bounded region.

I agree it would be nice to have boundary information. We are focusing on point data for lack of information. For the US boundary information would certainly be available, but for all other countries it is either impossible or would be prohibitively expensive.