[Talk-us] admin level for US states
I can't speak to the other countries you mention, but Japan's prefectures are the equivalent of US states, and both are admin_level 4. The Japanese states (doshusei) listed for admin_level 3 on the wiki page seem to be some sort of experiment in regional administration. More info in English here: http://www.mutantfrog.com/2010/12/03/the-new-kansai-regional-league/ On Wednesday, November 26, 2014, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote: 2014-11-25 10:59 GMT+01:00 Sarah Hoffmann lon...@denofr.de: admin_levels have been invented in order that different borders can be rendered consistently among countries according to the wiki[1]. +1, that's also what I am after. That's also what I remember. State eqivalent doesn't mean that they must be organised exactly in the same way but that they are roughly at the same level of administrative hierarchies. +1 my point was, that they aren't. Italian regions aren't roughly at the same level of administrative hierarchy than are the US States, and I guess also the French regions aren't. Japan does have states on admin level 3. Under that definition US states are the same as German bundesländer, French regions, Canadian provinces etc. even though their political influence and internal organzisation is wildly different. how could you compare hierarchical levels if the organization is wildly different? There is a lot of software around that works under the assumption that US states (and the equivalents in other countries) can be found at admin_level=4. and this would break if level 3 was used? The current admin level hierarchy is not perfect but it works for most practical applications. actually it seems that changing the rendering to administrative polygons rather than using place nodes will create/reveal some inconsistencies and I was trying to fix this / find a solution. Maybe you are right and the solution is not in modifying the US state admin level but changing elsewhere. It simply seemed kind of an inconsistency to have the US state at the same level as German Länder and French Region, but maybe that was a misinterpretation of the admin levels. cheers, Martin ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
2014-11-25 10:59 GMT+01:00 Sarah Hoffmann lon...@denofr.de: admin_levels have been invented in order that different borders can be rendered consistently among countries according to the wiki[1]. +1, that's also what I am after. That's also what I remember. State eqivalent doesn't mean that they must be organised exactly in the same way but that they are roughly at the same level of administrative hierarchies. +1 my point was, that they aren't. Italian regions aren't roughly at the same level of administrative hierarchy than are the US States, and I guess also the French regions aren't. Japan does have states on admin level 3. Under that definition US states are the same as German bundesländer, French regions, Canadian provinces etc. even though their political influence and internal organzisation is wildly different. how could you compare hierarchical levels if the organization is wildly different? There is a lot of software around that works under the assumption that US states (and the equivalents in other countries) can be found at admin_level=4. and this would break if level 3 was used? The current admin level hierarchy is not perfect but it works for most practical applications. actually it seems that changing the rendering to administrative polygons rather than using place nodes will create/reveal some inconsistencies and I was trying to fix this / find a solution. Maybe you are right and the solution is not in modifying the US state admin level but changing elsewhere. It simply seemed kind of an inconsistency to have the US state at the same level as German Länder and French Region, but maybe that was a misinterpretation of the admin levels. cheers, Martin ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
2014-11-24 21:18 GMT+01:00 Minh Nguyen m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us: Assuming this table reflects the actual state of the map, most countries have chosen 4 for their state equivalents. Actually, many countries do not have something like a state equivalent, it is a particularity of the USA because they are a federal republic. This level-skipping scheme extends all the way down to the smallest jurisdictions. Because the TIGERcnl import chose admin_level=8 for municipalities, skipping 7, I was able to tag Ohio townships as 7 without demoting all the state's cities and villages. [2] Even though neighboring Kentucky and West Virginia lack a level of government between counties and municipalities, it makes sense to keep cities in most states at the same admin_level, because they're functionally equivalent. (Virginia is a notable exception.) I was not going to get into discussion about cities and other lower level admin entities. Please lets stick to the state question. For context, there's an open pull request to have the Standard stylesheet render country and state labels based on administrative boundary polygons rather than place nodes. [3] yes, this is also something I wanted to point to, because in the discussion for this style change it was argued that some countries, which currently do use level 3, should change that to level 4 (like the US), and I was arguing the other way round, that the US should probably change the states to level 3 instead. Martin, how would the U.S. would be affected by this change? As it stands, U.S. state boundaries and labels appear at z4 and above, regardless of the state's size. Of the smallest states, Rhode Island (RI) appears at z4 and z6+, Connecticut (CT) appears at z4+, and Maryland (MD) and Delaware (DE) are both obscured at z4 by the label for Washington, D.C. At a glance, this change would seemingly omit most of the Northeastern states' labels at z4. It appears to set a minimum size of 750 way pixels at z4 and 3,000 at z5 for displaying a state's label. I don't really see those states' two-letter refs as being clutter. I am not sure why raising the importance would lead to less names displayed. If this holds true, the stylesheet would have to adopt to correct this IMHO. cheers, Martin ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 10:29:25AM +0100, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: 2014-11-24 21:18 GMT+01:00 Minh Nguyen m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us: Assuming this table reflects the actual state of the map, most countries have chosen 4 for their state equivalents. Actually, many countries do not have something like a state equivalent, it is a particularity of the USA because they are a federal republic. admin_levels have been invented in order that different borders can be rendered consistently among countries according to the wiki[1]. That's also what I remember. State eqivalent doesn't mean that they must be organised exactly in the same way but that they are roughly at the same level of administrative hierarchies. Under that definition US states are the same as German bundesländer, French regions, Canadian provinces etc. even though their political influence and internal organzisation is wildly different. There is a lot of software around that works under the assumption that US states (and the equivalents in other countries) can be found at admin_level=4. The current admin level hierarchy is not perfect but it works for most practical applications. Please don't break it. If you need to have a more find-grained distinction on how the administrative units are organised, I suggest introducing a new tag instead of changing the meaning of a well-established one. Kind regards Sarah [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Admin_level#admin_level ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
On 2014-11-25 01:29, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: 2014-11-24 21:18 GMT+01:00 Minh Nguyen m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us mailto:m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us: Assuming this table reflects the actual state of the map, most countries have chosen 4 for their state equivalents. Actually, many countries do not have something like a state equivalent, it is a particularity of the USA because they are a federal republic. I understand; I just meant that most countries have chosen admin_level=4 for the second-level governmental authority, regardless of any autonomy or sovereignty. That is, most of the level 3 entries in the table are for entities that have no legislative or executive function. I don't think it was historically viewed as a problem that admin_level=4s in different countries had varying levels of autonomy. This level-skipping scheme extends all the way down to the smallest jurisdictions. Because the TIGERcnl import chose admin_level=8 for municipalities, skipping 7, I was able to tag Ohio townships as 7 without demoting all the state's cities and villages. [2] Even though neighboring Kentucky and West Virginia lack a level of government between counties and municipalities, it makes sense to keep cities in most states at the same admin_level, because they're functionally equivalent. (Virginia is a notable exception.) I was not going to get into discussion about cities and other lower level admin entities. Please lets stick to the state question. My point is that there's a pattern. Using 4 for states is not an arbitrary choice, but rather an intentional way of leaving room for additional detail. Incidentally, [1] is silent on the question of Indian reservations, a topic that has come up periodically on this list. Is there any consensus on how to tag them? If so, it should be reflected in the table. For context, there's an open pull request to have the Standard stylesheet render country and state labels based on administrative boundary polygons rather than place nodes. [3] yes, this is also something I wanted to point to, because in the discussion for this style change it was argued that some countries, which currently do use level 3, should change that to level 4 (like the US), and I was arguing the other way round, that the US should probably change the states to level 3 instead. It sounds like the intention is to preserve U.S. state labels at z4 (by promoting them to level 3) while demoting subdivisions of smaller countries to higher zoom levels (by keeping them at level 4). I'm all for a more readable map of Europe, but basing admin_levels on degrees of autonomy won't really solve the problem. Some federal republics have relatively small second-level divisions (e.g., Switzerland), while some very large second-level divisions happen to be provinces of Canada, which is not a federal republic. Martin, how would the U.S. would be affected by this change? As it stands, U.S. state boundaries and labels appear at z4 and above, regardless of the state's size. Of the smallest states, Rhode Island (RI) appears at z4 and z6+, Connecticut (CT) appears at z4+, and Maryland (MD) and Delaware (DE) are both obscured at z4 by the label for Washington, D.C. At a glance, this change would seemingly omit most of the Northeastern states' labels at z4. It appears to set a minimum size of 750 way pixels at z4 and 3,000 at z5 for displaying a state's label. I don't really see those states' two-letter refs as being clutter. I am not sure why raising the importance would lead to less names displayed. If this holds true, the stylesheet would have to adopt to correct this IMHO. Sorry, I should've been clearer. It seemed to me like the proposed stylesheet change would cause some labels to disappear at z4-5 without any changes to the data, because the stylesheet would enforce a minimum area, whereas currently it doesn't. But I haven't tried out the change, so hopefully I'm wrong and the U.S. will look good either way. :-) [1] http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States_admin_level -- m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
On 11/25/14 5:24 AM, Minh Nguyen wrote: Incidentally, [1] is silent on the question of Indian reservations, a topic that has come up periodically on this list. Is there any consensus on how to tag them? If so, it should be reflected in the table. i'm not aware of any consensus beyond indian reservations are hard. they do not fit naturally into the admin_level hierarchy. richard -- rwe...@averillpark.net Averill Park Networking - GIS IT Consulting OpenStreetMap - PostgreSQL - Linux Java - Web Applications - Search ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
Here is the most recent thread on the tagging list about Indian reservations: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2014-November/020160.html Neither of the proposals mentioned in the thread advocates using admin_level On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 7:58 AM, Richard Welty rwe...@averillpark.net wrote: On 11/25/14 5:24 AM, Minh Nguyen wrote: Incidentally, [1] is silent on the question of Indian reservations, a topic that has come up periodically on this list. Is there any consensus on how to tag them? If so, it should be reflected in the table. i'm not aware of any consensus beyond indian reservations are hard. they do not fit naturally into the admin_level hierarchy. richard -- rwe...@averillpark.net Averill Park Networking - GIS IT Consulting OpenStreetMap - PostgreSQL - Linux Java - Web Applications - Search ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
On 2014-11-25 06:54, Brad Neuhauser wrote: Here is the most recent thread on the tagging list about Indian reservations: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2014-November/020160.html Neither of the proposals mentioned in the thread advocates using admin_level Thanks. I've updated the page; feel free to improve on it: http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States_admin_level In particular, please update the table if you find that it doesn't reflect how a particular state is currently being mapped. The wiki isn't always clear about whether it's documenting current practice or an obscure proposal. -- m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 8:00 AM, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote: I wonder why US States are tagged as admin_level=4, wouldn't it be more consistent with the rest of the map to have them tagged as level 3? Based on which uses of admin_level=3? A quick scan of the wiki shows admin_level=4 as states or provinces for several countries. I guess the biggest reason they are admin_level=4 now is, that seemed like the way to go in 2009[1], but that wouldn't prevent a change for a compelling reason. [1] wiki history of the admin_level page goes back to 2009, the tag use in USA could pre-date that. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dadministrative ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
I would point out that the legal status of U.S. States is slightly different than that of provinces (and likely of states in other countries). For one thing, U.S. States exist in their own right and do not drive their existence from a higher government (even though most of them were created by a higher government). German States and perhaps Swiss cantons might have the same status. -jack On November 24, 2014 9:44:22 AM EST, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote: On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 8:00 AM, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote: I wonder why US States are tagged as admin_level=4, wouldn't it be more consistent with the rest of the map to have them tagged as level 3? Based on which uses of admin_level=3? A quick scan of the wiki shows admin_level=4 as states or provinces for several countries. I guess the biggest reason they are admin_level=4 now is, that seemed like the way to go in 2009[1], but that wouldn't prevent a change for a compelling reason. [1] wiki history of the admin_level page goes back to 2009, the tag use in USA could pre-date that. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dadministrative ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- Typos courtesy of fancy auto-spell technology. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
On 11/24/14 9:44 AM, Richard Weait wrote: On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 8:00 AM, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote: I wonder why US States are tagged as admin_level=4, wouldn't it be more consistent with the rest of the map to have them tagged as level 3? Based on which uses of admin_level=3? A quick scan of the wiki shows admin_level=4 as states or provinces for several countries. I guess the biggest reason they are admin_level=4 now is, that seemed like the way to go in 2009[1], but that wouldn't prevent a change for a compelling reason. i guess i'd like to hear if anyone has a compelling reason. it wouldn't be that hard to change (there aren't that many states), but what do we gain from the change? richard -- rwe...@averillpark.net Averill Park Networking - GIS IT Consulting OpenStreetMap - PostgreSQL - Linux Java - Web Applications - Search ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
On 11/24/2014 5:00 AM, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: I wonder why US States are tagged as admin_level=4, wouldn't it be more consistent with the rest of the map to have them tagged as level 3? admin_level=4 is consistent with Canada and Australia at the very least. I believe it's also consistent with Mexico, South Africa as well as other countries. Given that states are often grouped together for various purposes into regions, I'm skeptical about admin_level=3 anyways. The groupings vary depending on the purpose and we don't map them, but it does demonstrate that there's the concept of a grouping above states. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Jack Burke burke...@gmail.com wrote: I would point out that the legal status of U.S. States is slightly different than that of provinces (and likely of states in other countries). For one thing, U.S. States exist in their own right and do not drive their existence from a higher government (even though most of them were created by a higher government). German States and perhaps Swiss cantons might have the same status. -jack ...and German states and Swiss cantons are admin_level=4 according to the previously-linked page. I'd also note that page says admin_level was introduced in order that different borders can be rendered consistently among countries. That is, it's a worldwide rendering aid, not trying to make profound statements about legal minutiae. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
2014-11-24 18:05 GMT+01:00 Brad Neuhauser brad.neuhau...@gmail.com: ...and German states and Swiss cantons are admin_level=4 according to the previously-linked page. yes, I am coming from a German-Italian perspective, where Italian regions are clearly less sovereign than German states, which again are less sovereign than US american states (all on level 4 currently). We need the levels 5 to 10 in Germany (all are in use, 3 is not in use). Correspondance of European entities should also be supported by the NUTS and LAU system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenclature_of_Territorial_Units_for_Statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_administrative_unit cheers, Martin ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
And the England/Wales and /Scotland borders are all 4, too. If we're trying to reflect geopolitical status, these should absolutely be different than provinces. OTOH, if we're just interested in drawing pretty lines -jack On November 24, 2014 12:55:04 PM EST, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote: 2014-11-24 18:05 GMT+01:00 Brad Neuhauser brad.neuhau...@gmail.com: ...and German states and Swiss cantons are admin_level=4 according to the previously-linked page. yes, I am coming from a German-Italian perspective, where Italian regions are clearly less sovereign than German states, which again are less sovereign than US american states (all on level 4 currently). We need the levels 5 to 10 in Germany (all are in use, 3 is not in use). Correspondance of European entities should also be supported by the NUTS and LAU system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenclature_of_Territorial_Units_for_Statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_administrative_unit cheers, Martin ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- Typos courtesy of fancy auto-spell technology. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] admin level for US states
On 2014-11-24 05:00, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: I wonder why US States are tagged as admin_level=4, wouldn't it be more consistent with the rest of the map to have them tagged as level 3? IIRC mappers in many regions of the world started out using even-numbered admin_levels only, skipping the odd numbers, so that more obscure groupings of jurisdictions could be inserted in the future without going fractional. And indeed, if you look at [1], admin_level=3 has been used primarily for regions: groups of provinces that have no separate administrative authority. Assuming this table reflects the actual state of the map, most countries have chosen 4 for their state equivalents. This level-skipping scheme extends all the way down to the smallest jurisdictions. Because the TIGERcnl import chose admin_level=8 for municipalities, skipping 7, I was able to tag Ohio townships as 7 without demoting all the state's cities and villages. [2] Even though neighboring Kentucky and West Virginia lack a level of government between counties and municipalities, it makes sense to keep cities in most states at the same admin_level, because they're functionally equivalent. (Virginia is a notable exception.) For context, there's an open pull request to have the Standard stylesheet render country and state labels based on administrative boundary polygons rather than place nodes. [3] Martin, how would the U.S. would be affected by this change? As it stands, U.S. state boundaries and labels appear at z4 and above, regardless of the state's size. Of the smallest states, Rhode Island (RI) appears at z4 and z6+, Connecticut (CT) appears at z4+, and Maryland (MD) and Delaware (DE) are both obscured at z4 by the label for Washington, D.C. At a glance, this change would seemingly omit most of the Northeastern states' labels at z4. It appears to set a minimum size of 750 way pixels at z4 and 3,000 at z5 for displaying a state's label. I don't really see those states' two-letter refs as being clutter. They're probably the most informative use of that space at z4 in a big country like the U.S. Unfortunately, they really clutter up the map in smaller countries, especially in Europe. [1] http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dadministrative [2] http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/United_States_admin_level [3] https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/1134 -- m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
