New Place type "City / Town area": a polygon for where the town name is shown, with an editor-chosen arrival point
Today, the only way to put a town or village name on the app map is the city name carried by road segments. Editors control neither where that label is drawn nor where a search for the town leads. As a result, some communities bend their naming rules only to get the label near the town centre. In France, for example, the city name is set only inside the built-up area, with a different rule outside it. Yet the city on a segment has no effect on routing.
Proposal: a new Place type "City / Town area", drawn as a polygon in WME (restricted to a minimum rank, e.g. L4+):
1. The polygon sets the "urban" zone where the town name is displayed on the app map, independently of the city names on segments. Without it, the name can appear in a forest, kilometres away from the built-up area.
2. The polygon itself is NOT drawn in the app: it only positions the label, so it never hides the polygons of real places.
3. It carries an arrival point chosen by editors (town hall, main square). A driver who searches for the town is sent there.
4. It can represent villages and hamlets that are not municipalities, so they become searchable without inventing a city on segments.
Benefits:
- Segment city names can follow the official address (the municipality, as in national address databases): one naming rule instead of two, fewer alternate names, cleaner house numbers.
- Town labels and search results land where people expect them.
- The same tool works in every country.
Not only a French issue. The US, the UK, Spain, Italy and Czechia also keep the city name on segments only inside built-up areas (the US wiki says it is "to keep city names from sprawling"), and they work around the missing sub-cities with plain Place points. This Place type would solve the same problem for them, and it would cover the long-standing request for editable sub-cities.
Related: "Create UI allowing editing of city center position" (https://waze.uservoice.com/forums/59225/suggestions/42317575) covers only the centre point. This proposal adds the display area and the non-municipal villages.
drslump34
shared this idea
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milkyway35
commented
For the sake of the map and for the peace of all communities in the world : do it !!!!
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kpouer commented
It was discussed at every meetup since 2013 it is time to implement that.
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Lulu Delaphoto commented
This seems like a very good improvement.
It is more logical, more intuitive, much simpler to implement, and better aligned with the concerns of the typical Waze user—at least in France. -
See also the Discuss suggestion "Entry point for cities" (Estonia, February 2026), which asks for the same arrival point: https://www.waze.com/discuss/t/entry-point-for-cities/398490
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Marc commented
avec des segments bien agencés au niveau de l'agglo et pas à l'extérieur, je pense que le pb ne se pose pas