Re: [Talk-GB] Admin Boundaries and Combined Authorities

[Colin Smale]

On 2020-07-28 14:41, Dan Glover wrote:

> Other observations, if I may?
> 
> Levels 4 and 6 give UK-wide coverage and level has complete coverage of 
> England. The Combined Authorities are relatively sparse in their coverage (by 
> area - by population is a different matter) so there would be significant 
> gaps in Level 5 under this proposal. Unused Level 7 would "work" in the case 
> of the Greater London Authority - which otherwise doesn't seem to exist 
> except at Level 5 - it has always been a special case. I've not looked at the 
> detailed composition of the Combined Authorities but the problem seems to be 
> they're groupings of entities currently in Levels 6 and 8 (and might straddle 
> boundaries in the current Level 5?) so the hierarchical aspect perhaps cannot 
> be preserved.

I don't believe they currently straddle Region boundaries, but that may
be more by accident than design. They certainly contain mixtures of UAs
and Districts, and sometimes straddle "ceremonial county" boundaries.
This makes it a challenge to fit them into a true hierarchy. 

The GLA is legally a special case, but in practical terms it is very
like a Metropolitan County (now abolished) with Metropolitan Districts
as constituent parts. The London Boroughs are at level 8, so in that
respect the GLA would slot right in at level 6; but the GLA also covers
the City of London, which is currently also at level 6. 

> Stepping back: how is the map data being used? Is a way to identify the 
> Combined Authorities now more relevant than the (English) Government Regions? 
> Should this be handled in some other way than admin_level, which looks as 
> though it's intended for countries where everything is in a strict and 
> consistent hierarchy?

My thought is that the Government Regions can safely be migrated to
boundary=statistical as someone has already mentioned (sorry I forget
exactly who). 

An alternative approach for CAs is to model them as collections of other
objects - in OSM terms, a relation with the constituent area relations
as members. This would allow the individual relations to be given roles
within the CA, thus creating a possibility to include "associate
members" and non-local-authority members (such as fire services which
have their own relations in OSM) that are sometimes legally represented
in the CA governance.___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Admin Boundaries and Combined Authorities

[Colin Smale]

On 2020-07-28 11:45, Ed Loach wrote:

> Colin wrote:
> 
>> Thanks for your message. I would like to challenge one point - your 
>> assertion that the Regions 
>> at admin_level=5 are in "widespread popular use". It is true that many 
>> people talk about 
>> geographical regions like "the South-East" or "the North-West". But these 
>> are ill-defined 
>> vernacular phrases and do not refer to the sharply-defined regions that are 
>> only occasionally 
>> used in governmental areas. If you asked people "is Essex in the South-East" 
>> I expect 99% would 
>> say "yes"
> 
> I must be in that 1% being an Essex resident who lives in the East of England 
> (and gets "Look East" as the local news).

No offence intended of course! It sounds like you are towards the north
of Essex then. But yes, you are right, my use of "99%" was hyperbole to
make a point. Boundaries of TV regions, both BBC and ITV, can also often
appear a bit random to the naked eye and depend to no small degree on
the locations and coverage of transmitters, meaning that my part of Kent
can basically only get London programs unless you have a high-gain
aerial on a pole to get the Kent programs from Bluebell Hill. 

> Admin level 5 is the NUTS 1 regions which as far as I know we are still using 
> to keep statistics from one year to the next even though we have now left the 
> EU. As such it is a meaningful admin level as much as say UPRNs on 
> properties, or references on A roads, or fhrs ids. 
> 
> There is some argument I suppose for changing from boundary=administrative 
> admin_level=5 to boundary=statistical and something to indicate NUTS 1 though 
> (type will have already been used for type=boundary).

That sounds like a good plan to me.___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Admin Boundaries and Combined Authorities

[Ed Loach]

Colin wrote:

> Thanks for your message. I would like to challenge one point - your assertion 
> that the Regions 
> at admin_level=5 are in "widespread popular use". It is true that many people 
> talk about 
> geographical regions like "the South-East" or "the North-West". But these are 
> ill-defined 
> vernacular phrases and do not refer to the sharply-defined regions that are 
> only occasionally 
> used in governmental areas. If you asked people "is Essex in the South-East" 
> I expect 99% would 
> say "yes"

I must be in that 1% being an Essex resident who lives in the East of England 
(and gets "Look East" as the local news). 

Admin level 5 is the NUTS 1 regions which as far as I know we are still using 
to keep statistics from one year to the next even though we have now left the 
EU. As such it is a meaningful admin level as much as say UPRNs on properties, 
or references on A roads, or fhrs ids. 

There is some argument I suppose for changing from boundary=administrative 
admin_level=5 to boundary=statistical and something to indicate NUTS 1 though 
(type will have already been used for type=boundary).

Ed


___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Admin Boundaries and Combined Authorities

[Colin Smale]

Hi Sarah, 

Thanks for your message. I would like to challenge one point - your
assertion that the Regions at admin_level=5 are in "widespread popular
use". It is true that many people talk about geographical regions like
"the South-East" or "the North-West". But these are ill-defined
vernacular phrases and do not refer to the sharply-defined regions that
are only occasionally used in governmental areas. If you asked people
"is Essex in the South-East" I expect 99% would say "yes", and asking
people to locate the Isle of Wight in either South-East or South-West
would yield, at best, an inconclusive result. 

Hence my suggestion that admin level 5 for government regions is no
longer in active use, and is therefore available for adoption by the
Combined Authorities. 

I am sure I don't need to remind you of the disconnect in the UK between
a) administrative areas, b) postal addressing and c) people's perception
of "locations"...

Best regards, 

Colin 

On 2020-07-28 09:48, Sarah Hoffmann wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm the one who caused this discussion by editing West Yorkshire. I was 
> looking
> into admin boundaries for Nominatim (the search engine) who uses them to
> determine the place description or address of a place. As part of this I had
> noticed a hole in the admin level 6 coverage and 'fixed' it.
> 
> I have to say that this discussion reflects a paradigm shift in the 
> interpretation
> of boundary=administrative that I find concerning. boundary=administrative 
> used
> to reflect the hierarchical structure of a country as viewed by popular use. 
> That
> is quite practical because it makes it possible to determine reasonable 
> subdivisions
> from the OSM data without having to know how exactly a country is governed.
> 
> Since a few months I notice more and more that people start to interpret
> boundary=administrative in a literal sense and argue that all those where 
> there is
> no direct governmental function have to go away or retagged with something 
> else.
> This 'something else' is often locally chosen without any coordination with 
> the
> international community or any documentation what so ever (try finding out 
> about
> boundary=ceremonial in the wiki if you don't believe me). I fear that we
> end up with a fragmentation in tagging that makes it seriously difficult to 
> use the
> data in a meaningful way.
> 
> Coming back to the issue at hand: the regions on admin level 5 may not 
> exactly have
> an administrative function but my impression is that they are in wide-spread
> popular use. I don't visit the UK often but even I am aware of them. That's a
> good reason to include them in the boundary=administrative hierarchy. Moving 
> them
> to some other tagging schema makes them practically invisible.
> 
> Mixing regions and CAs in admin_level=5 is not a good idea either because it
> breaks the global assumption that the admin_levels create a proper hierarchy.
> Same goes for admin_level=5.5. This would be really unexpected and likely just
> ignored by most consumers.
> 
> Sarah
> 
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 06:41:02AM +0100, Steve Doerr wrote: 
> 
>> Could they perhaps be 5.5 to distinguish them from regions?
>> 
>> Steve
>> 
>> From: Brian Prangle [mailto:bpran...@gmail.com]
>> 
>> I favour admin  level 5 too.
>> 
>> On Sun, 26 Jul 2020 at 23:52, Colin Smale >  > wrote:
>> 
>> The LAs of which the CAs are composed are sometimes Metropolitan Boroughs 
>> with admin_level=8, and sometimes Unitary Authorities with admin_level=6. I 
>> am tending towards admin_level=5; this value is/was in use for the Regions, 
>> but they no longer have an admin function (if they ever had one) so I 
>> consider admin level 5 as "available" for use by Combined Authorities.
>> 
>> --
>> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
>> https://www.avast.com/antivirus
> 
>> ___
>> Talk-GB mailing list
>> Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
> 
> ___
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Admin Boundaries and Combined Authorities

[Sarah Hoffmann]

Hi,

I'm the one who caused this discussion by editing West Yorkshire. I was looking
into admin boundaries for Nominatim (the search engine) who uses them to
determine the place description or address of a place. As part of this I had
noticed a hole in the admin level 6 coverage and 'fixed' it.

I have to say that this discussion reflects a paradigm shift in the 
interpretation
of boundary=administrative that I find concerning. boundary=administrative used
to reflect the hierarchical structure of a country as viewed by popular use. 
That
is quite practical because it makes it possible to determine reasonable 
subdivisions
from the OSM data without having to know how exactly a country is governed.

Since a few months I notice more and more that people start to interpret
boundary=administrative in a literal sense and argue that all those where there 
is
no direct governmental function have to go away or retagged with something else.
This 'something else' is often locally chosen without any coordination with the
international community or any documentation what so ever (try finding out about
boundary=ceremonial in the wiki if you don't believe me). I fear that we
end up with a fragmentation in tagging that makes it seriously difficult to use 
the
data in a meaningful way.

Coming back to the issue at hand: the regions on admin level 5 may not exactly 
have
an administrative function but my impression is that they are in wide-spread
popular use. I don't visit the UK often but even I am aware of them. That's a
good reason to include them in the boundary=administrative hierarchy. Moving 
them
to some other tagging schema makes them practically invisible.

Mixing regions and CAs in admin_level=5 is not a good idea either because it
breaks the global assumption that the admin_levels create a proper hierarchy.
Same goes for admin_level=5.5. This would be really unexpected and likely just
ignored by most consumers.

Sarah


On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 06:41:02AM +0100, Steve Doerr wrote:
> Could they perhaps be 5.5 to distinguish them from regions?
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Brian Prangle [mailto:bpran...@gmail.com]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I favour admin  level 5 too.
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, 26 Jul 2020 at 23:52, Colin Smale   > wrote:
> 
> The LAs of which the CAs are composed are sometimes Metropolitan Boroughs 
> with admin_level=8, and sometimes Unitary Authorities with admin_level=6. I 
> am tending towards admin_level=5; this value is/was in use for the Regions, 
> but they no longer have an admin function (if they ever had one) so I 
> consider admin level 5 as "available" for use by Combined Authorities.
> 
> 
> 
> --
> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
> https://www.avast.com/antivirus

> ___
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb


___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Admin Boundaries and Combined Authorities

[Steve Doerr]

Could they perhaps be 5.5 to distinguish them from regions?

Steve





From: Brian Prangle [mailto:bpran...@gmail.com]





I favour admin  level 5 too.



On Sun, 26 Jul 2020 at 23:52, Colin Smale mailto:colin.sm...@xs4all.nl> > wrote:

The LAs of which the CAs are composed are sometimes Metropolitan Boroughs with 
admin_level=8, and sometimes Unitary Authorities with admin_level=6. I am 
tending towards admin_level=5; this value is/was in use for the Regions, but 
they no longer have an admin function (if they ever had one) so I consider 
admin level 5 as "available" for use by Combined Authorities.



--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Admin Boundaries and Combined Authorities

[Brian Prangle]

I favour admin  level 5 too. West Midlands CA is tagged as 6 which was a
pure estimate by me as being at least equivalent to the constituent LA
members.  Transport is a heck of a slice of its budget and function
(capital £300m and operating £100m) It  also plays a big role in economic
development ( which includes skills development) and strategic planning for
housing (with a big budget for brownfield remediation) and has just been
given a budget of £100m  for taking on the responsibility for adult
education. WMCA also has projects in the area of mental health and I
believe the Manchester CA has responsibility for health generally. So CAs
do have quite a few uber admin functions at a level "above" existing
authorities which the constituent members have relinquished and should be
given an admin level.  Quite how you represent the associate "observer"
members is a puzzle I've steered clear of

regards

Brian

On Sun, 26 Jul 2020 at 23:52, Colin Smale  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I think we need to discuss tagging of Combined Authorities. I spotted an
> edit that changed the tagging on West Yorkshire Combined Authority, and it
> was pointed out to me that there were already other instances of similar
> tagging for Combined Authorities (Greater Manchester for example).
>
> CAs have basically zero interaction with the public, except for the
> directly elected Mayor; although they have certain statutory tasks (public
> transport etc). They can be seen as a grouping of local authorities, as
> opposed to a LA in their own right. Should they really be tagged as
> boundary=administrative at all? Or should they have a parallel hierarchy as
> is used for police areas for example?
>
> If they are accepted as boundary=administrative, what admin level should
> be used? The LAs of which the CAs are composed are sometimes Metropolitan
> Boroughs with admin_level=8, and sometimes Unitary Authorities with
> admin_level=6. I am tending towards admin_level=5; this value is/was in use
> for the Regions, but they no longer have an admin function (if they ever
> had one) so I consider admin level 5 as "available" for use by Combined
> Authorities.
>
> An alternative may be to represent them as relations containing as members
> the constituent authorities. This would have the advantage of the ability
> (through the use of roles) to distinguish between "constituent councils"
> which are full members and "non-constituent councils" which only
> participate in certain committees.
>
> Any thoughts or comments?
>
>
> ___
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>
___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Admin Boundaries and Combined Authorities

[Colin Smale]

For England (i.e. not Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland): 

* at admin level 6, there should be full coverage, either as an
administrative county or a unitary authority
* at admin level 8, partial coverage - full within administrative
counties, none within unitary authorities
* at admin level 10, partial coverage - complex situation with many
"unparished areas" and "lands common"

In the case of West Yorkshire, the constituent councils used to be
Metropolitan Boroughs at AL8 when West Yorkshire was an administrative
county. These days the constituent councils are Unitary Authorities and
should therefore be at AL6 themselves for consistency with other UAs.
Tagging West Yorkshire at AL6 as well would currently break the model. 

On 2020-07-27 08:55, Frederik Ramm wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On 7/27/20 00:50, Colin Smale wrote: 
> 
>> If they are accepted as boundary=administrative, what admin level should
>> be used? The LAs of which the CAs are composed are sometimes
>> Metropolitan Boroughs with admin_level=8, and sometimes Unitary
>> Authorities with admin_level=6. I am tending towards admin_level=5; this
>> value is/was in use for the Regions, but they no longer have an admin
>> function (if they ever had one) so I consider admin level 5 as
>> "available" for use by Combined Authorities.
> 
> A question that should be considered together with this is: Does/should
> England have full coverage (i.e. no "holes") on boundary=administrative
> with any admin level above 4?
> 
> Situation in many countries is that they "mostly" do on 6, with some
> exceptions for city states, capital districts and the like. I have
> absolutely no idea how this is in England and won't offer any - just
> saying it is worth thinking about. For example, the edit that prompted
> this discussion added a boundary=adminsistrative to West Yorkshire,
> which until then was a "hole" in the AL6 map.
> 
> Bye
> Frederik___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

Re: [Talk-GB] Admin Boundaries and Combined Authorities

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 7/27/20 00:50, Colin Smale wrote:
> If they are accepted as boundary=administrative, what admin level should
> be used? The LAs of which the CAs are composed are sometimes
> Metropolitan Boroughs with admin_level=8, and sometimes Unitary
> Authorities with admin_level=6. I am tending towards admin_level=5; this
> value is/was in use for the Regions, but they no longer have an admin
> function (if they ever had one) so I consider admin level 5 as
> "available" for use by Combined Authorities.

A question that should be considered together with this is: Does/should
England have full coverage (i.e. no "holes") on boundary=administrative
with any admin level above 4?

Situation in many countries is that they "mostly" do on 6, with some
exceptions for city states, capital districts and the like. I have
absolutely no idea how this is in England and won't offer any - just
saying it is worth thinking about. For example, the edit that prompted
this discussion added a boundary=adminsistrative to West Yorkshire,
which until then was a "hole" in the AL6 map.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb

[Talk-GB] Admin Boundaries and Combined Authorities

[Colin Smale]

Hi, 

I think we need to discuss tagging of Combined Authorities. I spotted an
edit that changed the tagging on West Yorkshire Combined Authority, and
it was pointed out to me that there were already other instances of
similar tagging for Combined Authorities (Greater Manchester for
example). 

CAs have basically zero interaction with the public, except for the
directly elected Mayor; although they have certain statutory tasks
(public transport etc). They can be seen as a grouping of local
authorities, as opposed to a LA in their own right. Should they really
be tagged as boundary=administrative at all? Or should they have a
parallel hierarchy as is used for police areas for example? 

If they are accepted as boundary=administrative, what admin level should
be used? The LAs of which the CAs are composed are sometimes
Metropolitan Boroughs with admin_level=8, and sometimes Unitary
Authorities with admin_level=6. I am tending towards admin_level=5; this
value is/was in use for the Regions, but they no longer have an admin
function (if they ever had one) so I consider admin level 5 as
"available" for use by Combined Authorities. 

An alternative may be to represent them as relations containing as
members the constituent authorities. This would have the advantage of
the ability (through the use of roles) to distinguish between
"constituent councils" which are full members and "non-constituent
councils" which only participate in certain committees. 

Any thoughts or comments?___
Talk-GB mailing list
Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb