Yep, but not that  "For smaller populated places (hamlets, villages, small towns) this is rarely a significant problem though". This is a neighbourhood, which is even smaller than hamlets, villages and small towns.

In cases when a place node is needed, the tag is not repeated in the area. But the "area" is tagged as a boundary=* closed way. If we want to keep both the area and the node here, the area should be used as a boundary=place outer, and the node as a label or admin_centre member, otherwise we have 2 place=neightbourhoods (while in reality there's only one).