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by nextos 1804 days ago
In brand new neighbourhoods, I've also found OSM much better than Google Maps. E.g., lots of new developments in Cambridge were extremely well annotated whereas Google Maps didn't even have streetnames. This is super helpful when you are shopping for a new property.
3 comments

When I moved into a new neighbourhood, the street name was on neither map. I've updated both. OSM update was fast. Google took several months to update, even though I had provided official documents as requested. The frustrating thing was that most delivery companies had issues during this time. Also, some online shops didn't consider my address valid.
Yes, I've been in the same situation multiple times! UK postcodes are really fine grained. It's great for tracking buildings, but it's a nightmare when companies do not update their databases.

For those who've not been to the UK before, in urban areas a postcode and a house number are enough to identify a property.

Cambridge is a special case - as I understand, it's the UK's hub for hobbyist mappers, ~all of which use OpenStreetMap as a base.
It's a rare opportunity when I get to map actual new roads. Usually it's filling in details like a trash bin here, a hedge there... roads are a much more important core feature. If you ever spot an unmapped neighborhood, just let me know! ;)
I spot them pretty often in the suburbs and exurbs of American cities. Those areas tend not to have as many active mappers as urban areas, so new subdivisions sometimes go a while before anyone maps them. Even then the first-cut mapping is usually someone not actually there just tracing from the Bing imagery.