Justin O’Beirne has published a second part of his critique of
OpenStreetMap. In this part, Justin looks in detail at the rendering
of city labels in the OpenStreetMap.org “Mapnik” layer.
http://www.41latitude.com/post/1349685626/openstreetmap-critique-2
Ah Havana IL, alas while it may be small it IS legally a city, so if people in larger cities want to change their status to the legal status they are of course free to do so.Some reference material;http://www.scenichavana.com/The density of the Florida cities is probably correct, the scarcity of other cities is probably incorrect on a legal status. As for importance and display purposes it might be advisable for the renderer to consider population when displaying city names.
<a href="http://compton.nu/2010/10/city-labels-in-openstreetmap/">More detail on Tom Hughes Blog</a> explain what the real issues are.<i>"it might be advisable for the renderer to consider population when displaying city names"</i> The renderer doesn’t consider population directly. It considers <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:place">’place’ tags</a> in the OpenStreetMap data. These can be adjusted by anyone who cares to edit the data, but the community of mappers in the U.S. could also try to organise working towards more consistent application of the tags (and probably the choice of place tag would be based on population)