Adding new sites should be easier. I get that this is a tradeoff between rapid engagement and trust, but since the project is so new it's vastly more likely that a visitor will want to <i>add</i> something as opposed to successfully looking it up.<p>Maybe the focus on cities, while great for the lookup scenario, should not play such a big role when adding data points. My suggestion: just open it up, have a form where any member can add a coffee shop, at any location (Google Maps-powered). As site admins you could review the submissions later and sort it out.<p>For example, I was initially motivated to add some places near me. That's in Germany, so no cities there yet. This means I've got to jump through the hoop of adding a city, at which point any user who was previously excited about adding stuff to the database becomes stranded and loses interest. I would like to add sites in different cities, so technically I would have to open up requests for 3 cities - in a sparsely populated area like Germany that's not feasible. I'm more interested in how far away a location is than what city it is in.<p>Also, you should make use of the browser Geo API.