Re: [talk-au] admin_level, suburbs and rendering; should the order be updated?

[Little Maps]

> Regardless of the outcome of this discussion, thanks for all your work Dian 
> to change the “towns” back to suburbs. I downloaded a copy of the Victorian 
> place names data a little while ago for a GIS exercise and it was a real pain 
> to discover that an enormous number of purported towns were actually just 
> Melb suburbs. It will be fantastic to see them all tagged correctly again. 
> Cheers Ian

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Re: [talk-au] admin_level, suburbs and rendering; should the order be updated?

[Andrew Harvey]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2021 at 09:29, Dian Ågesson  wrote:

> Suburbs and Localities in Australia are all using admin_level=10
> ,
> and some changes in early 2020 to the default map rendering (
> https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4016)
> significantly reduced the prominence of admin_level 9 and 10 tags. While
> some other countries do use levels 9 and 10 for "suburbs", most seem to use
> it for neighbourhoods, sub-divisions, etc. I feel as though this makes
> Australia's usage a bit of an outlier, as a 'suburb' has more prominence
> than a generic neighbourhood would. There are also a few entries in the
> existing admin_level structure that seem out of place?
>
place=* and admin_level=* from a data consumer and renderer are
independent. So long as they are tagged as place=suburb then the renderer
shouldn't care what admin_level it is associated with.

> I can see this was discussed in September 2020 (
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/2020-September/013976.html).
> In that thread, the hierarchy of places was agreed to be generally
> Country>State>LGA>locality (town/suburb)>land parcel, but the implications
> for rendering weren't covered.
>
> I would like to propose that we adjust the admin_level to better align
> with the general usage of suburb within the community, with the additional
> benefit of better rendering consistent with the boundary usage internally.
>
If you look at the Geoscape Administrative Boundaries data
https://geoscape.com.au/data/administrative-boundaries/ it covers

1. Localities
2. Local Government Areas (LGAs)
3. Wards
4. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Boundaries
5. Electoral Boundaries
6. State Boundaries
7. Town Points

I think the only true administrative boundaries we have are Australia
(place=country), State Boundaries (place=state), LGAs
(place=county/municipality), Wards, Localities (place=suburb within a city,
place=town, village, hamlet outside of cities), Electoral Boundaries.

Town Points aren't boundaries, and ABS Boundaries shouldn't belong in OSM.

Other boundaries like School Intake Zones, Police Local Area Commands,
Health Districts are probably too narrow in scope to belong in OSM.

Given the use of postcodes for addressing we should add them to OSM, but
mostly they've been added as a postal_code tag on a locality boundary or
addr:postcode tag on an address, because the boundaries are not open.

Since we don't have formally defined boundaries for
place=region,district,city,quarter,neighbourhood,city_block should we be
adding an admin_level at all?

So should we remove 7/5?

> *Current Usage*
> 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
> *Australia*  State/Territory Border  LGA Border District or
> Region Border (e.g Greater Sydney, Greater Melbourne, etc.) Australia
> Post Postode Border Locality Border (ONLY where larger than ABS boundary) 
> Locality
> Border (suburbs or towns)
>
> *Proposed Usage*
>
>
> 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
> *Australia* ** State/Territory Border District or Region Border
> (e.g Greater Sydney, Greater Melbourne, etc.) LGA Border (none) Locality
> Border (suburbs or towns) (none) (none)*
>
> * Australia Post Borders would be changed from boundary=administrative to
> boundary=postal_code, or put here if appropriate.
>
I checked via the overpass wizard query "admin_level=8 in AU" and there are
no results, so no australia post borders are mapped that way, and I'm not
aware of any.

boundary=postal_code is only used for one postcode in melbourne where it
didn't follow locality boundaries and couldn't be tagged as postal_code on
the locality.

ACT has a good set of boundary=postal_code.

So I'm supportive of removing Australia Post Postode Border from
admin_level=8.

That leaves should we move localities from 9 to 8? I don't think it really
matters much to be honest.
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Re: [talk-au] admin_level, suburbs and rendering; should the order be updated?

[stevea]

I will and do (cautiously, as an "outsider" from the USA, but as an "insider" 
being one who seriously coordinated the USA [1] getting our 4-10 admin_level 
table(s) [2] about as hammered-into-submission-and-consensus as is humanly 
OSM-possible, over months and years and sweat and tears) say one thing:

Assigning admin_level=8 to Postcode Borders simply isn't correct.  Mail 
delivery areas are not administrative boundaries.  They might be convenient, 
but they should be boundary=postal_code, not boundary=admin_level (see, that is 
a direct collision in the key boundary for exactly the right reason:  one is 
not the other).

(In the USA, postal_codes, what we call ZIP Codes — Zone/Improvement/Plan — are 
more like routing algorithms for efficient mail delivery.  They absolutely do 
not describe geographic regions and it is essentially geographically impossible 
to make them do so).

The other proposed changes to Australia's table?  I step aside, good Australian 
OSM Contributors.

SteveA

[1] https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States_admin_level
[2] https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States/Boundaries
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Re: [talk-au] admin_level, suburbs and rendering; should the order be updated?

[Ewen Hill]

Hi all,
  A great discussion and can I thank Dian for raising this.

*Postcodes*
As well as SteveA's comments, postcode boundaries are proprietary and
Auspost are never going to sign a waiver or have it as an open source
service and no, I don't really understand this logic. The best you can get
is an "interpretation" of postcodes every 5 years from the ABS. Auspost
don't have a process to identify alterations within those five years
(assuming the ABS postcodes are very close) so we are really up a creek
without a paddle postcode wise.

*Indigenous nations/country*
I have a strong belief that we should allocate an entry around level three
to six for indigenous country. There will be discussion on fuzziness of
boundaries and ownership, a number of these have been resolved already by
the Registered Aboriginal Parties (RAP) for an area however I don't see
that being a huge issue. My key issue is appropriation of the country and
area polygons for the ability for others to commercialise this or reduce
the purchasing of indigenous materials.

I don't see that all RAPs and others would update the map, however I see
having the ability to add this data and be able to index it, is important
to OSM in Australia.

Ewen



On Tue, 30 Nov 2021 at 10:53, stevea  wrote:

> I will and do (cautiously, as an "outsider" from the USA, but as an
> "insider" being one who seriously coordinated the USA [1] getting our 4-10
> admin_level table(s) [2] about as hammered-into-submission-and-consensus as
> is humanly OSM-possible, over months and years and sweat and tears) say one
> thing:
>
> Assigning admin_level=8 to Postcode Borders simply isn't correct.  Mail
> delivery areas are not administrative boundaries.  They might be
> convenient, but they should be boundary=postal_code, not
> boundary=admin_level (see, that is a direct collision in the key boundary
> for exactly the right reason:  one is not the other).
>
> (In the USA, postal_codes, what we call ZIP Codes — Zone/Improvement/Plan
> — are more like routing algorithms for efficient mail delivery.  They
> absolutely do not describe geographic regions and it is essentially
> geographically impossible to make them do so).
>
> The other proposed changes to Australia's table?  I step aside, good
> Australian OSM Contributors.
>
> SteveA
>
> [1] https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States_admin_level
> [2] https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States/Boundaries
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>


-- 
Warm Regards

Ewen Hill
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Re: [talk-au] admin_level, suburbs and rendering; should the order be updated?

[stevea]

On Nov 29, 2021, at 10:39 PM, Ewen Hill  wrote:
> Indigenous nations/country
> I have a strong belief that we should allocate an entry around level three to 
> six for indigenous country. There will be discussion on fuzziness of 
> boundaries and ownership, a number of these have been resolved already by the 
> Registered Aboriginal Parties (RAP) for an area however I don't see that 
> being a huge issue. My key issue is appropriation of the country and area 
> polygons for the ability for others to commercialise this or reduce the 
> purchasing of indigenous materials.
> 
> I don't see that all RAPs and others would update the map, however I see 
> having the ability to add this data and be able to index it, is important to 
> OSM in Australia.

"Um," (he begins timidly)...

This is REALLY going to be different in Oz than USA, but please consider 
boundary=aboriginal_lands.  This tag is widely used, was voted upon with great 
acclaim and really "seems correct" (to my parochial view of things there).  It 
renders in Carto (same as boundary=protected_area + protect_class=24, but don't 
use that, please!) with a light tan color and a thicker outline at its edge, 
looks quite nice actually.

Also, this is QUITE complicated in the USA and I'm not sure if it applies 
there, but if even a whiff of it seems familiar, please consider this.  What we 
say in the USA about these lands is:

"Wikipedia states 'tribal sovereignty is a form of parallel sovereignty within 
the U.S. constitutional framework, constrained by but not subordinate to other 
sovereign entities,' where a map of the contiguous US (lower 48 states) with 
reservation lands excluded displays. In that light, admin_level=2 or even no 
admin_level=* may be appropriate on these (called "First Nations" in Canada, to 
give a neighboring flavor to the semantics). Several tagging solutions have 
been proposed, though many have challenges."

So, if there is anything like that in Australia's aboriginal_lands, the 
challenges to OSM's admin_level scheme are great, and so far, not completely 
"solved."  On the other hand, if these are indeed "sovereign," then you're in 
better luck than we are!  Really, this can be a challenging problem to solve 
(where there are "overlapping" or "shared" political areas and it isn't "neat, 
clean and easy" to delineate one from the other).

Best,
SteveA
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Re: [talk-au] admin_level, suburbs and rendering; should the order be updated?

[Graeme Fitzpatrick]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2021 at 16:55, stevea  wrote:

> On Nov 29, 2021, at 10:39 PM, Ewen Hill  wrote:
> > Indigenous nations/country
> > I have a strong belief that we should allocate an entry around level
> three to six for indigenous country. There will be discussion on fuzziness
> of boundaries and ownership, a number of these have been resolved already
> by the Registered Aboriginal Parties (RAP) for an area however I don't see
> that being a huge issue. My key issue is appropriation of the country and
> area polygons for the ability for others to commercialise this or reduce
> the purchasing of indigenous materials.
> >
> > I don't see that all RAPs and others would update the map, however I see
> having the ability to add this data and be able to index it, is important
> to OSM in Australia.
>

Ewen

Yep, great idea!

We did discuss this briefly a little while ago, when Aus Post started
pushing for / allowing "Country" names to be included in mailing addresses.

https://auspost.com.au/about-us/supporting-communities/rachael-mcphail-making-traditional-place-names-part-of-mailing-addresses

I agree that it may not be something that is very usable "now", but it's
something that will only gain in popularity over time, so let's get in
early with OSM!

"Um," (he begins timidly)...
>

It's alright Steve, we don't bite! (that hard anyway :-))

To sum it up simply - it's complicated!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_land_rights_in_Australia

So some areas could be aboriginal lands, but most aren't.

What I was talking about (& possibly Ewen) was to include the original
"nations" lands eg
https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/map-indigenous-australia

Unfortunately, I'd think the chances of being allowed to use that map are
pretty well non-existent :-(
https://aiatsis.gov.au/form/permission/map

the challenges to OSM's admin_level scheme are great, and so far, not
> completely "solved." ... Really, this can be a challenging problem to solve
> (where there are "overlapping" or "shared" political areas and it isn't
> "neat, clean and easy" to delineate one from the other).
>

Yep! :-(

Thanks

Graeme
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