Hacker News Reader

Comment by ilamont | Hacker News Reader

In Los Angeles, Jeffrey Schneider, a longtime architect in the Silver Lake area, said he recently began calling the hill he lived on 'Silver Lake Heights' in ads for his rental apartment downstairs, partly as a joke. Last year, Silver Lake Heights also appeared on Google Maps.

Google asleep at the wheel again.

Developers wanting to create some tony new "neighborhood" as well as real estate agents attempting to shift the borders of desirable and undesirable neighborhoods are having a field day.

View on HN

Or not. This is the essential process that any place name goes through (really any name), someone starts using it and then others adopt it.

Whether the first someone is an official isn't that important.

The difference is that Google makes it look like a legit name even if few people used it before.

How many grains of sand are in a pile?

Doesn't seem unreasonable at all. Guy calls his apartments Silver Lake Heights, his tenants tell their visitors they live in Silver Lake Heights #4, visitors punch that in their phones but can't find it, get the street adress, and a couple enterprising 'local guides' suggest a place name.

Perception is reality.

The guy's apartment building isn't called Silver Lake Heights, what he did was start using the term "Silver Lake Heights" to describe an area previously known as "Silver Lake".

Realtors often drive the naming of new "neighborhoods", especially if it is lower class area that they want to gentrify. You know, branding.

How do you think other neighborhoods called [Something] Heights came to be?

I understand what you are saying, places are whatever people agree to call them, but I don't doubt that real estate agents, developers, etc are eager to have places called by new names when they are gentrifying the area.

Sure, but only insofar as any group of people living in a neighborhood likes to name it. Or do you still call the city by its original name, Yerba Buena? :)

Edit: Oh wait, that was a renaming too; just ask the Ohlone.

Did the Ohlone use OpenStreetMaps?

Maybe that's the confusion.

>Google asleep at the wheel again.

Again? They've been comatose for years. Look how they keep screwing up w/Youtube.

Everything is an algorithm problem to them and when something goes wrong it's always "oops, crazy technology blah blah algorithms". Which is 100% a cop out. Google has been resting on its laurels for a while now. Like Steam, they've shirked all responsibility for their service/platform. Must be nice to do f-all and still print money...

I'm in San Diego, and with the housing prices, I'm sure it's a constant search for areas that gentrifiers can afford. The last neighborhood to pop was Barrio Logan, which used to be a very rough neighborhood. Now it's yoga shops, art collectives, kombucha, and other stuff hipster yuppies need to have around them.

Sure, there's still graffiti and taco shops, but it's commissioned art and mango-chutney-glazed-pork-belly-kimchi tacos now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com