OpenStreetmap - Get city quarter aka Stadtviertel for german address

Question

I'm trying to get via the OSM webservice additional address information for a query. So I tried http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?format=xml&countrycodes=de&q=An+der+Raumfabrik+34+76227&addressdetails=1&polygon_kml=1&dedupe=1 but the result does not show any "Stadtviertel" (city quarter) information:

   <searchresults timestamp="Thu, 02 Jan 14 09:35:08 +0000" attribution="Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright" querystring="An der Raumfabrik 34 76227" polygon="false" exclude_place_ids="97708000,3678299921,79156233,79640281,3678299920,97255389,79581301" more_url="http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?format=xml&exclude_place_ids=97708000,3678299921,79156233,79640281,3678299920,97255389,79581301&accept-language=en-US,en;q=0.8,de;q=0.6&addressdetails=1&q=An+der+Raumfabrik+34+76227">
    <place place_id="97708000" osm_type="way" osm_id="183115054" place_rank="26" boundingbox="48.996223449707,48.9964256286621,8.46396350860596,8.46437549591064" lat="48.9964248" lon="8.463964" display_name="An der RaumFabrik, Durlach, Karlsruhe, Regierungsbezirk Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, 76227, Germany, European Union" class="highway" type="unclassified" importance="0.9">
        <geokml>
            <LineString>
                <coordinates> 8.463964000000001,48.9964248 8.4643747,48.996224400000003 </coordinates>
            </LineString>
        </geokml>
        <road>An der RaumFabrik</road>
        <suburb>Durlach</suburb>
        <city>Karlsruhe</city>
        <county>Karlsruhe</county>
        <state_district>Regierungsbezirk Karlsruhe</state_district>
        <state>Baden-Württemberg</state>
        <postcode>76227</postcode>
        <country>Germany</country>
        <country_code>de</country_code>
        <continent>European Union</continent>
    </place>
</searchresults>

Is there any possibility to get the German "Stadtviertel"?

Answer 1

Yes it is possible, as OSM knows this element in boundary hierachies (and as node place=suburb) and of course Nominatim makes use of it.

But this informations need to be available at the OSM DB. You must understand that boundaries are one of the very few things that can't be collected just by mappers on the ground as they are basically 'invisible'. Thus we need assistance in the form of imports, which occure more and more due to the OpenData-movement. If you like to improve the situation for a particular city, feel free to help the local community to gain and maintain this informations :)

E.g. for the City of Rostock, a nominatim query for "Südstadt, Rostock" works fine, (as the local GIS team donated us the boundaries years ago) and returns the correct shape:
http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=97599592