If you zoom in to this Panera map, you get an odd database with neighborhood names. I can’t believe that this is an official place name database, it’s more of something that home builders created.
Where does this data come from?
Your link is showing me Panera places around my home (there are none).
I don’t know where you’re zooming.
There is some type of government plat map layer but I think each state would have different information included.
In Washington they have a plat layer. In Idaho they don’t.
You are probably right as builders or lot owners get to name the subdivision in many areas. I live in the Dudash Subdivision that was created when Mrs Dudash split her large lot into several residential plats.
I thought about posing almost exactly this question just last night, when I noticed for the first time that Google Maps has neighborhood designations I don’t think it used to have. Perhaps Panera’s maps are drawing off of Google’s database – the font for the neighborhood names even looks the same. I’d be interested to know where Google gets this data.
Near as I can tell they are actually pulling it county by county. A lot of counties use Esri interactive maps to offer parcel, tax, and ownership information to the public. My guess is that Esri collects and sells it.
Our county tax data includes parcel maps, neighborhood names, square footage, tax value, recent sales, ownership and much more; almost all readily available online maps and real estate databases I am familiar with, tie back to this data.
It is just a large download available on their website for free, I believe this is nearly universal these days.
As to where the neighborhood names came from - it is done by the developer when they plat land.
The Board on Geographic Names has a database called Geographic Names Information Service. In the 1980s, BGN hired outside contractors (mostly geography professors) to densify the database by adding all the geographic names they could find. In big cities, a lot of the area names are long-forgotten 19th century additions or townsite plats that were absorbed by the growing big city.
GNIS policy is that a “populated place” such as a neighborhood or subdivision never loses a name, unless it ceases to be populated. Google and other online map services pull geographic names in from GNIS, but don’t seem to have a way to verify whether they’re still actually used.
BGN/USGS conceived of GNIS primarily as an index to be able to find places on maps. They never anticipated that someday mapmakers would automagically put all those names on their maps without any local knowledge or human judgment.
That’s interesting information.
Presumably, Panera is using the same database for the entire country, but the level of inane names varies quite a bit. If I use it in the Phoenix area (where I live now), I get all of these housing-development names. But, when I tried it in Silver Spring, MD (where I grew up), the names are much more reasonable - only larger communities are listed, and there are far fewer of them.
Even that policy isn’t followed very well. There are “populated place” entries in GNIS that were never populated and others that were but are no longer.
Someone went through all the USGS maps and found all the place names. Those were the original entries in GNIS. Must have taken a long time to do that.
Panera has nothing to do with this. You’re looking at a bog-standard Google map inside Panera’s webpage. The presence or absence of neighborhood / subdivision names is all on Google using (or not) GNIS and the vagaries of GNIS’ data.
I too have noticed Google displaying more and more neighborhood / subdivision names in the last few months. And that such coverage is spotty on a national basis.