Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-06 Thread Warin



On 6/10/23 14:08, Graeme Fitzpatrick wrote:

Thanks Ian & Steve

Looking at the numbers from a Qld perspective, I'd go inbetween the 
two samples!


e.g.

Hamlet <250
Village 250-1000
Town 1000-15000
City 15000<

Which would produce https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1Bup

It also becomes obvious that there are quite a few places with no 
population listed!



OSM does not appear to have access to ABS data.

Other than population signage on physical entry to the feature I don't 
think OSM has access to any other population data..


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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-05 Thread Graeme Fitzpatrick
Thanks Ian & Steve

Looking at the numbers from a Qld perspective, I'd go inbetween the two
samples!

e.g.

Hamlet <250
Village 250-1000
Town 1000-15000
City 15000<

Which would produce https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1Bup

It also becomes obvious that there are quite a few places with no
population listed!

Thanks

Graeme


On Fri, 6 Oct 2023 at 12:35, stevea  wrote:

> Oops, resending to the talk-au list as a whole:
>
>
> On Oct 5, 2023, at 7:00 PM, Little Maps  wrote:
> > City = > 50,000 people
> > Town = 5000 - 50,000
> > Village = 1000 - 5000
> > Hamlet = < 1000
> >
> > This kind of query gives a broad-brush pattern of how we can classify
> places into cities, towns etc. If we can gain consensus on broad cutoffs,
> we can then explore how services such as health and educational facilities
> influence outcomes.
>
> A great OT query; thank you!
>
> In USA, and by no means do I mean to be culturally insensitive or seem
> like I'm ramming anything down anybody's throat, we use some rough
> guidelines at
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States/Tags#Places which
> overlap somewhat.  That wiki, again, deliberately USA-specific (and still
> emerging and getting fine-tuned as of 2023) says:
>
> City = > 50,000 people
>
> Town = 10,000 - 50,000, though some "incorporated municipalities" which
> are smaller than 10,000 (such as the rare state capital which qualifies,
> like Montpelier, Vermont, or other VERY significant "towns" with less than
> 10,000 but they contain an important "cultural center" like a university, a
> hospital or other "major amenity" will get place=town as well, this can
> include "major shopping" or something like "the only big box (hardware,
> variety...) store around for a long ways")
>
> Village = 200 - 10,000, though this is flexible (as of 2023), and it is
> emerging as consensus that a village contains at least a small commercial
> area such as a supermarket, a small market (even a convenience store), a
> bank, a gas station (or two, you know, for price competition's sake!) and
> perhaps a medical clinic and/or cluster of doctor / dentist / medical
> offices.
>
> Hamlet < 200 people
>
> Isolated Dwelling = no more than two households / families.  (Could be a
> sheep / cattle station for you folks down under).
>
> Trying to help offer perspective, please, though, "you do you" (Aussies do
> Aussies).
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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-05 Thread stevea
Oops, resending to the talk-au list as a whole:


On Oct 5, 2023, at 7:00 PM, Little Maps  wrote:
> City = > 50,000 people
> Town = 5000 - 50,000
> Village = 1000 - 5000
> Hamlet = < 1000
> 
> This kind of query gives a broad-brush pattern of how we can classify places 
> into cities, towns etc. If we can gain consensus on broad cutoffs, we can 
> then explore how services such as health and educational facilities influence 
> outcomes.

A great OT query; thank you!

In USA, and by no means do I mean to be culturally insensitive or seem like I'm 
ramming anything down anybody's throat, we use some rough guidelines at 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States/Tags#Places which overlap 
somewhat.  That wiki, again, deliberately USA-specific (and still emerging and 
getting fine-tuned as of 2023) says:

City = > 50,000 people

Town = 10,000 - 50,000, though some "incorporated municipalities" which are 
smaller than 10,000 (such as the rare state capital which qualifies, like 
Montpelier, Vermont, or other VERY significant "towns" with less than 10,000 
but they contain an important "cultural center" like a university, a hospital 
or other "major amenity" will get place=town as well, this can include "major 
shopping" or something like "the only big box (hardware, variety...) store 
around for a long ways")

Village = 200 - 10,000, though this is flexible (as of 2023), and it is 
emerging as consensus that a village contains at least a small commercial area 
such as a supermarket, a small market (even a convenience store), a bank, a gas 
station (or two, you know, for price competition's sake!) and perhaps a medical 
clinic and/or cluster of doctor / dentist / medical offices.

Hamlet < 200 people

Isolated Dwelling = no more than two households / families.  (Could be a sheep 
/ cattle station for you folks down under).

Trying to help offer perspective, please, though, "you do you" (Aussies do 
Aussies).
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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-05 Thread Little Maps
 Hi all, building on Andrew's great work, I've provided an Overpass query
below that allows users to change population cutoffs to see how different
values affect which places are categorised as cities, towns, villages and
hamlets.

https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1Bug (yep, that's the random link name, its not
a bug!)

I've used the following cut-offs in the query, as these align with how I
view cities/towns etc in Vic and southern NSW (which I know best) but you
can change the values to whatever you like to see how different values
change how places are categorised.

City = > 50,000 people
Town = 5000 - 50,000
Village = 1000 - 5000
Hamlet = < 1000

This kind of query gives a broad-brush pattern of how we can classify
places into cities, towns etc. If we can gain consensus on broad cutoffs,
we can then explore how services such as health and educational facilities
influence outcomes.

The query only shows places that have 2021 ABS population data (most/all of
which Andrew D has entered). Other places aren't shown. Andrew has
described other limitations in earlier posts.

For a simple way to explore how cutoffs will change the outcomes, Wikipedia
provides lists of cities in each state, ranked by population:

Aus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia_by_population

Qld:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_in_Queensland_by_population

NSW:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_in_New_South_Wales_by_population

Vic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_in_Victoria_by_population

Tas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_in_Tasmania_by_population

SA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_in_South_Australia_by_population

WA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_in_Western_Australia_by_population

Hope this is useful. Thanks again to everyone for a stimulating
conversation. Cheers Ian



On Fri, Oct 6, 2023 at 10:48 AM Little Maps  wrote:

> I agree with others that setting up a long list of services is probably
> unworkable, and would prefer to focus on population cut offs as the key
> criterion, with secondary, minor consideration to a very short list of key
> services. However, can we focus on what the key cut offs are before we
> discuss the fine details of scoring extra services? Once we’ve decided on
> the population cut offs it could be relatively simple to use overpass
> queries to see how often population cut offs address most of the service
> issues anyway (because doctors etc tend to be in bigger centres) and how
> often we have anomalies. Then we can work out scoring systems to address
> the anomalies. Until we agree on broad population-based categories we can’t
> move forward much imo. Thanks again Andrew for all your work and info, and
> everyone else for input. Cheers Ian
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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-05 Thread Little Maps
I agree with others that setting up a long list of services is probably 
unworkable, and would prefer to focus on population cut offs as the key 
criterion, with secondary, minor consideration to a very short list of key 
services. However, can we focus on what the key cut offs are before we discuss 
the fine details of scoring extra services? Once we’ve decided on the 
population cut offs it could be relatively simple to use overpass queries to 
see how often population cut offs address most of the service issues anyway 
(because doctors etc tend to be in bigger centres) and how often we have 
anomalies. Then we can work out scoring systems to address the anomalies. Until 
we agree on broad population-based categories we can’t move forward much imo. 
Thanks again Andrew for all your work and info, and everyone else for input. 
Cheers Ian
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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-05 Thread cleary


Thanks Andrew. You are clearly well-informed on the availability and use of ABS 
data.  

Population size correlates fairly closely with the range and level of services 
that are available in a place. I support using population data to determine 
city/town/village/hamlet classification. 




On Fri, 6 Oct 2023, at 6:20 AM, Andrew Davidson wrote:
> On 5/10/23 18:01, cleary wrote:
>> the small central district? Or is it the much larger Tamworth LGA? I
>> think it would include the suburbs but not the outlying
>> towns/villages in the LGA. There are also city/suburbs such as "City
>> of Ryde" which is the name of a local government area in the Sydney
>> metropolitan area but the actuality is that, for all practical
>> purposes, Ryde is a suburb of Sydney.
>
> The ABS has population stats at different geographical levels. For 
> Tamworth we have LGA:
>
> Tamworth Regional: 63,070
>
> This would be the population you would put on the admin_level 6 
> boundary. From the suburb and localities you get:
>
> Tamworth: 189
>
> This would be the population that would go on the admin_level 9 
> boundary. From the urban centres and localities you get:
>
> Tamworth: 35,415
>
> This is the population of the settlement, which I have been adding to 
> the place node. The UCL is the ABS's attempt to answer the question 
> "what is the population of ?"
>
>> 
>> Leaving aside cities and suburbs, our discussion has mainly been
>> about non-city rural areas. While  there may be some fuzziness around
>> the population of the business and residential districts of a
>> settlement and whether the population in its surrounding areas should
>> be counted, I would support population numbers as a reasonably
>> objective and useful determinant of town/village/hamlet status.
>
> How to subdivide an urban settlement into subdivisions is another set of 
> problems.
>
> I would prefer a system based on just population, but I got the feeling 
> that we wouldn't get agreement on that, as we have mappers who want to 
> adjust.

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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-05 Thread Andrew Davidson

On 5/10/23 18:01, cleary wrote:

the small central district? Or is it the much larger Tamworth LGA? I
think it would include the suburbs but not the outlying
towns/villages in the LGA. There are also city/suburbs such as "City
of Ryde" which is the name of a local government area in the Sydney
metropolitan area but the actuality is that, for all practical
purposes, Ryde is a suburb of Sydney.


The ABS has population stats at different geographical levels. For 
Tamworth we have LGA:


Tamworth Regional: 63,070

This would be the population you would put on the admin_level 6 
boundary. From the suburb and localities you get:


Tamworth: 189

This would be the population that would go on the admin_level 9 
boundary. From the urban centres and localities you get:


Tamworth: 35,415

This is the population of the settlement, which I have been adding to 
the place node. The UCL is the ABS's attempt to answer the question 
"what is the population of ?"




Leaving aside cities and suburbs, our discussion has mainly been
about non-city rural areas. While  there may be some fuzziness around
the population of the business and residential districts of a
settlement and whether the population in its surrounding areas should
be counted, I would support population numbers as a reasonably
objective and useful determinant of town/village/hamlet status.


How to subdivide an urban settlement into subdivisions is another set of 
problems.


I would prefer a system based on just population, but I got the feeling 
that we wouldn't get agreement on that, as we have mappers who want to 
adjust.


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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-05 Thread cleary

It seems to me that the presence and types of services correlate reasonably 
closely with population, which is a verifiable number.  

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) statistical boundaries approximate but 
are not exactly the same as state government suburb/locality boundaries but are 
close enough. Prior to gaining permission to use administrative boundaries 
data, OSM was using ABS boundaries as the best available data. I am presuming 
we still have permission to use ABS data.

I can think of issues about cities and suburbs such as whether one counts 
Sydney locality ("suburb boundary") which is just the central city area while 
the City of Sydney LGA is larger again and  the Sydney metro area is much 
larger. There would be similar issues in other cities.  Does Tamworth's 
population include its suburbs or just the small central district? Or is it the 
much larger Tamworth LGA? I think it would include the suburbs but not the 
outlying towns/villages in the LGA. There are also city/suburbs such as "City 
of Ryde" which is the name of a local government area in the Sydney 
metropolitan area but the actuality is that, for all practical purposes, Ryde 
is a suburb of Sydney. 

Leaving aside cities and suburbs, our discussion has mainly been about non-city 
rural areas. While  there may be some fuzziness around the population of the 
business and residential districts of a settlement and whether the population 
in its surrounding areas should be counted, I would support population numbers 
as a reasonably objective and useful determinant of town/village/hamlet status. 

I will be pleased to have a consistent approach to classifying settlements, 
whatever is agreed, 





On Thu, 5 Oct 2023, at 4:05 PM, Andrew Davidson wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 5, 2023 at 3:50 PM David Bannon  wrote:
>> I'd wonder if we are building an impossible to manage rule set. For example, 
>> many small town doctor's clinic only have a doctor there one or two days a 
>> week. So, a full time doctor is worth 40 points, so, a one day a week one is 
>> 8 points ? Many, many "towns" have a community hall (or even a Mechanic's 
>> Institute) but very many of them have fallen into such disrepair its unsafe 
>> to go in. And a Hospital, thats one with an Emergency
>
> Yeap, exactly. That's why I was suggesting only four classes of
> services and only their presence or not. That way you can check them
> with an Overpass query.
>
> If it's all too hard, then the obvious solution is to just make the
> definition of a village a settlement with a population greater than
> 200 and less than 1000.
>
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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-04 Thread Andrew Davidson
On Thu, Oct 5, 2023 at 3:50 PM David Bannon  wrote:
> I'd wonder if we are building an impossible to manage rule set. For example, 
> many small town doctor's clinic only have a doctor there one or two days a 
> week. So, a full time doctor is worth 40 points, so, a one day a week one is 
> 8 points ? Many, many "towns" have a community hall (or even a Mechanic's 
> Institute) but very many of them have fallen into such disrepair its unsafe 
> to go in. And a Hospital, thats one with an Emergency

Yeap, exactly. That's why I was suggesting only four classes of
services and only their presence or not. That way you can check them
with an Overpass query.

If it's all too hard, then the obvious solution is to just make the
definition of a village a settlement with a population greater than
200 and less than 1000.

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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-04 Thread David Bannon


On 5/10/23 14:41, Warin wrote:


Community hall, Police, Fire say 10 each

Store, fuel, mechanic say 20 each

Nurse medical facility, RFDS clinic say 30

Doctors say 40

Hospital say 100

I'd wonder if we are building an impossible to manage rule set. For 
example, many small town doctor's clinic only have a doctor there one or 
two days a week. So, a full time doctor is worth 40 points, so, a one 
day a week one is 8 points ? Many, many "towns" have a community hall 
(or even a Mechanic's Institute) but very many of them have fallen into 
such disrepair its unsafe to go in. And a Hospital, thats one with an 
Emergency Department or just a couple of beds and and a pair of 
overworked nurses ?  How long since that Store was open ? A mechanic ?  
Well, the guy at the servo can help you change a tyre (but only if you 
have a real spare tyre, what are you doing out here with a temporary one 
anyway ?).


My point is there are varying degrees of all these things, I am unsure 
too many mappers are willing or able to obtain the necessary detail.


Davo
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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-04 Thread Warin


On 5/10/23 14:08, Graeme Fitzpatrick wrote:

So coming back to this ...

I like the idea of adding "numbers" per extra facility :-)

Calling each of them is worth 100, if a place has Police, Fire & 
Ambos, do they get +300 or just +100?


& another "important" thing that I thought of - the community Hall, 
home of public meetings, dances etc!



I don't think the facilities are all worth the same 'points'.

But they should all add to the score.

A hospital should be 'worth' more than a store... ???


I'd start with a sore of 10 and go up from there?

Community hall, Police, Fire say 10 each

Store, fuel, mechanic say 20 each

Nurse medical facility, RFDS clinic say 30

Doctors say 40

Hospital say 100


Ambos tend to be 'attached' to hospitals/nurse medical centers so I'd 
not add them.







Thanks

Graeme


On Wed, 4 Oct 2023 at 09:08, Graeme Fitzpatrick 
 wrote:



On Tue, 3 Oct 2023 at 18:45, Andrew Davidson 
wrote:

apply the Fitzpatrick adjustment:


I like it! :-)

Although Fizzie Fuzziness has a better ring to it :-)

Talk more later - I'm just reverting stuff atm!

Thanks

Graeme


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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-04 Thread Graeme Fitzpatrick
So coming back to this ...

I like the idea of adding "numbers" per extra facility :-)

Calling each of them is worth 100, if a place has Police, Fire & Ambos, do
they get +300 or just +100?

& another "important" thing that I thought of - the community Hall, home of
public meetings, dances etc!

Thanks

Graeme


On Wed, 4 Oct 2023 at 09:08, Graeme Fitzpatrick 
wrote:

>
> On Tue, 3 Oct 2023 at 18:45, Andrew Davidson  wrote:
>
>> apply the Fitzpatrick adjustment:
>>
>
> I like it! :-)
>
> Although Fizzie Fuzziness has a better ring to it :-)
>
> Talk more later - I'm just reverting stuff atm!
>
> Thanks
>
> Graeme
>
>
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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-03 Thread Andrew Davidson

On 3/10/23 20:40, Warin wrote:

The 'government/community services' might be ordered by there total 
numbers?


PO (including local PO agents)

Police

Doctors (theses seam scarcer than Police?_

Hospitals


OK, so there was a maths error in my example. I was suggesting that the 
population threshold for a village would be a function of the number of 
classes of services available. So:


Number of classes present   Population threshold

0  400
1  300
2  200
3  100
40

Underlying this is the assumption that there are enough dwellings to 
make it to an OSM settlement (3).


You can add or remove classes and change the upper bound. It's all just 
a rule-of-thumb. The important thing being that it's documented 
somewhere and mapper can check it.



Outliers?

The Ilkurlka Roadhouse is on the Anne Beadell Highway. Next fuel .. east 
771 km Coober Pedy or west 550 km Laverton.


Population? 1? ... ~200 at Tjuntjuntjara. the nearest aboriginal community?


So there are two classes of services available, the threshold is 200 
people. If the population is 1 then it's not a village. According to the 
wiki article there is also a small outstation there, so there may be 
three dwellings, which would be a hamlet. Otherwise isolated dwellings.





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Re: [talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-03 Thread Warin


On 3/10/23 19:41, Andrew Davidson wrote:

On 2/10/23 21:53, Little Maps wrote:

As I understand your message, we have and/or can get population data
for a small proportion of places in Aus (probably with comprehensive
data for most larger places and less data for the many smaller ones).


There are two classes of problems:

1. Urban centres that have gown so much that they have coalesced with 
neighbouring urban centres. Some of these are easy to assign the 
population to a single place node (Gold Coast, Nowra - Bomaderry, 
Shepparton - Mooroopna). Others are not clear where you would put the 
population (Central Coast, Blue Mountains, Ocean Grove - Barwon 
Heads). There are about 90 of these out of 1800.


2. Settlements that are so small that the ABS doesn't consider them 
worthy of their own mesh block (the smallest geographic unit they 
report on). If a settlement doesn't rate a single residential mesh 
block I'd say it's not really a candidate for anything above hamlet.



This means that, if we develop a guideline based primarily on
population data we then have to develop a simple way to extrapolate
the guidelines to places without pop data. Yes?


If you can't get population data that kinda suggests it's either tiny 
or, grown so big that you have to start worrying about how to 
subdivide the urban area into suburbs etc.



As a simple starting point, I’m curious whether it’s possible to
first try to get agreement on general cut-offs for
villages/towns/cities etc using only the places that have pop data
(i.e. those you’ve mapped). We could present some different scenarios
so that everyone could see the implications of different decisions
for areas that they know.


The ABS uses a threshold of 1000 people in an urban area to identify 
an urban centre. In OSM speak this would be a town or city.


At the small end the old Natmap standard was not to show any 
settlements smaller than 200. Maybe that's the threshold for 
hamlet/village. Although I get the impression people would like to 
adjust that for the level of services available. Perhaps we could 
apply the Fitzpatrick adjustment:


add on or take off 50 people for each one of the following is or isn't 
available:


pub
shop
servo
a government service (PO/Hospital/Police)

So a settlement with pub, shop, servo, and school with a population of 
4 would be a village. A rural residential development with no services 
and a population of 750 would be a hamlet.


The cutoffs are going to be arbitrary. The important thing is to just 
choose some and make sure that there's some reasoning behind them.





The 'government/community services' might be ordered by there total 
numbers?


PO (including local PO agents)

Police

Doctors (theses seam scarcer than Police?_

Hospitals


Outliers?

The Ilkurlka Roadhouse is on the Anne Beadell Highway. Next fuel .. east 
771 km Coober Pedy or west 550 km Laverton.


Population? 1? ... ~200 at Tjuntjuntjara. the nearest aboriginal community?

https://www.ilkurlka.org.au/


Possibly these kind of places only go on certain types of map .. Hemma 
does a good job with highlighting such places with fuel/store symbols 
... and usually some contact details.




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[talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

2023-10-03 Thread Andrew Davidson

On 2/10/23 21:53, Little Maps wrote:

As I understand your message, we have and/or can get population data
for a small proportion of places in Aus (probably with comprehensive
data for most larger places and less data for the many smaller ones).


There are two classes of problems:

1. Urban centres that have gown so much that they have coalesced with 
neighbouring urban centres. Some of these are easy to assign the 
population to a single place node (Gold Coast, Nowra - Bomaderry, 
Shepparton - Mooroopna). Others are not clear where you would put the 
population (Central Coast, Blue Mountains, Ocean Grove - Barwon Heads). 
There are about 90 of these out of 1800.


2. Settlements that are so small that the ABS doesn't consider them 
worthy of their own mesh block (the smallest geographic unit they report 
on). If a settlement doesn't rate a single residential mesh block I'd 
say it's not really a candidate for anything above hamlet.



This means that, if we develop a guideline based primarily on
population data we then have to develop a simple way to extrapolate
the guidelines to places without pop data. Yes?


If you can't get population data that kinda suggests it's either tiny 
or, grown so big that you have to start worrying about how to subdivide 
the urban area into suburbs etc.



As a simple starting point, I’m curious whether it’s possible to
first try to get agreement on general cut-offs for
villages/towns/cities etc using only the places that have pop data
(i.e. those you’ve mapped). We could present some different scenarios
so that everyone could see the implications of different decisions
for areas that they know.


The ABS uses a threshold of 1000 people in an urban area to identify an 
urban centre. In OSM speak this would be a town or city.


At the small end the old Natmap standard was not to show any settlements 
smaller than 200. Maybe that's the threshold for hamlet/village. 
Although I get the impression people would like to adjust that for the 
level of services available. Perhaps we could apply the Fitzpatrick 
adjustment:


add on or take off 50 people for each one of the following is or isn't 
available:


pub
shop
servo
a government service (PO/Hospital/Police)

So a settlement with pub, shop, servo, and school with a population of 4 
would be a village. A rural residential development with no services and 
a population of 750 would be a hamlet.


The cutoffs are going to be arbitrary. The important thing is to just 
choose some and make sure that there's some reasoning behind them.



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