Japan Populated Places and Residential Areas from OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap exports for Japan include features tagged as cities, towns, villages, hamlets, isolated dwellings, or residential land use. The dataset is provided by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and was last updated on 2026-03-03. Features likely contain attributes such as name, place type, population, and administrative hierarchy.

Use Cases

• Map settlement hierarchy and distribution based on the 'place' attribute (city, town, village, etc.).
• Analyze residential land use patterns based on the 'landuse' attribute.
• Join population estimates for populated places using the 'population' attribute.
• Geocode locations using Japanese and English name fields ('name:ja' and 'name:en').

Strengths

• Data is sourced from OpenStreetMap, a large collaborative mapping project.
• Features are available in multiple geospatial formats (GEOJSON, SHP, GEOPACKAGE, KML).
• Includes both populated place types and residential land use classifications.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)

Collection Method

OpenStreetMap export filtered for specific tags.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-03 09:49:18.428222; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Japan