Re: [Talk-us] An admin_level for CDPs?
On 2013-01-01 4:29 PM, dies38...@mypacks.net
wrote:
{{key|border_type}} is described as an alternative and sometimes complement to
{{key|admin_level}} . I have recently been drawing subdivision boundaries
based on County GIS data and including {{tag|border_type|subdivision}} as part
of a relation of type border; see for instance
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/2672911 . --ceyockey
I've also been using border_type as a way of distinguishing between
cities and villages, which have the same admin_level in my state.
However, I've been content with mapping suburban subdivisions as landuse
areas rather than boundary relations. It's a lot easier for other
mappers to work with.
The benefit of admin_level is that renderers know what to do with them
right out of the box, whereas every country has different border_type
values with different levels of significance.
--
Minh Nguyen
Jabber: m...@1ec5.org; Blog: http://notes.1ec5.org/
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Re: [Talk-us] An admin_level for CDPs?
On 2013-01-01 2:18 PM, stevea wrote: On 12/31/12 5:12 PM, Minh Nguyen wrote: I'd argue that not all governmental boundaries need to be tagged as boundary=administrative. In Ohio, we've started to retag CDP boundaries with boundary=census and place=locality but without admin_level. [1][2] They still show up in Nominatim as localities. this is approximately what i was thinking should be done with CDPs. This sounds workable to me, as well. It is agreeable that CDPs not have an assigned admin_level, I was opening this for discussion to see if there might be wider consensus. CDPs *are* created by the Bureau of the Census, but the *SAs are not, they are created by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Ah, my mistake. I'm not fundamentally opposed to putting in statistical areas; I just think it may be less confusing to use some other value of boundary=* (even with admin_level set), rather than overloading boundary=administrative for what evidently isn't a straightforward hierarchy of government entities. It's specialized information, less important than your typical city/county distinctions when completing the sentence "This business is located in..." It *does* beg the question of what *should* be tagged as boundary=administrative *and* have an admin_level tag. For example, my local University of California campus has a polygon tagged boundary=administrative, border_type=university (and amenity=university + name=*). Might/should it also be tagged admin_level=4? Even though it partially overlaps (and largely is in) City Limits, it *is* an administrative unit of state government (neither city/local nor county) with its own police, fire and health-care infrastructure, its own planning and development functions and a recent lawsuit (since dismissed) between it and its "host" city, proving it and the city are different entities. I never really saw the need to tag state college campuses as boundary=administrative, just amenity=university, but some of the UCs do operate like cities unto themselves. The UC extension in Cincinnati ;-) has a neighborhood council that almost corresponds to the campus boundaries, so I mapped the neighborhood separately with admin_level=10. However, I don't think it always makes sense to tag public property as boundary=administrative based solely on who owns the land. In Ohio [1], a city can own property outside its limits: the City of Cincinnati recently sold a general aviation airport back to the suburb it's in, but it wouldn't've made sense to tag the airport as an exclave of Cincinnati. State law prohibits municipal exclaves, and it isn't as if any "Welcome to Cincinnati" signs were posted there. Also, a city or village can annex public property (such as a county park or public university) without the government agency's consent. [2] People describe public lands as being inside townships or municipalities, not as enclaves of them. The same question (admin_level=4) might also be asked about California State Park boundaries...but they are *already* tagged with admin_level=4, so at least there is precedent (thanks, Apo42) for state-level "units" with specific administrative boundaries to be tagged with admin_level. I'd like that to become widespread among all 50 states, which also implies national parks get tagged with admin_level=2. State/national parks and state universities really do have their own administrations, and this implies an admin_level tag. I think you meant that national parks would get admin_level=4 and state parks admin_level=6. Otherwise, you'd make national parks into nations. I've only mapped a couple of state parks, but here I'm also of the opinion that parks should get something other than boundary=administrative. Following examples in California, I've been overloading admin_level to indicate the admin_level of the operator (=2 for national, =4 for state, =6 for county). But if you combine admin_level=4 with boundary=administrative for national parks and so on, then national parks would conceptually be peers with states and state parks peers with counties. They may be subordinate to the same authority, but they aren't peers. So instead I've been misusing boundary=national_park, combining it with admin_level=4 for state parks. It stinks, but boundary=protected_area looks like a good way out of this mess. [3][4] What I found useful to do around here (where there are CDP polygons entered from TIGER, but they have no admin_level tag) is to add a point tagged hamlet=* or village=* or town=* (but not necessarily suburb=* as that implies city subordination, nor city=* as that implies incorporation) to the "approximate center point" of the CDP polygon, along with a name=* tag that matches the name of the CDP. This point might logically be a mathematical centroid, but I have found it more useful to place this point at a more culturally significant point in the "human center" of the community designated by th
Re: [Talk-us] An admin_level for CDPs?
> From: stevea [mailto:stevea...@softworkers.com] > Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 12:31 PM > To: talk-us@openstreetmap.org > Subject: [Talk-us] An admin_level for CDPs? > > I have been pondering the use of the admin_level key in the USA, and > have come to the realization that while values 2, 4, 6 and 8 are > correct for national, state, county and city boundaries (respectively), > it is more complicated than that. One minor point, although I realize your message doesn't actually raise this issue directly. People often assume that because admin_level=6 is used to tag counties in most of the US an admin_level=6 area is the same as a county. Most of the states have a very similar structure for administrative divisions so most people don't encounter the other structures. In Alaska as well as other parts of the world there are no counties. Other administrative divisions are used, not because they're the equivalent of counties but because they're what admin_level=6 means locally. This is perhaps more relevant in the US to cities where there are more definitions of what they are. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] An admin_level for CDPs?
On 1/1/13 6:52 PM, Jeff Meyer wrote: Zip code areas and voting districts seem to me to be be functionally equivalent to CPDs in that they are arbitrary geographic distinctions determined by agencies outside of local governments or administrations. Are they given a boundary=administrative? zip codes don't even properly belong in the discussion as there is no such thing as an "official" zip code area. the post office sees them as routes, not areas, and the Census zip code boundaries are a synthetic approximation. richard ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] An admin_level for CDPs?
Zip code areas and voting districts seem to me to be be functionally equivalent to CPDs in that they are arbitrary geographic distinctions determined by agencies outside of local governments or administrations. Are they given a boundary=administrative? For most administrative boundaries, one side of the boundary (the interior) is actually "administrated." (Administered?) The other side (the exterior) is not. That doesn't seem to be the case with CPDs, zips, or voting districts. That said, that rule doesn't really help with college campuses, school districts, school attendance areas, transit authority zones, UASI areas, fire districts, post office delivery areas, etc. Does administrative really mean governmental? Unfortunately, it's not clear that that helps, either, as school districts can be municipalities. Is there a master list / Rosetta Stone somewhere of these various entities & recommended tagging? On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 2:18 PM, stevea wrote: > On 12/31/12 5:12 PM, Minh Nguyen wrote: >> >>> I'd argue that not all governmental boundaries need to be tagged as >>> boundary=administrative. In Ohio, we've started to retag CDP boundaries >>> with boundary=census and place=locality but without admin_level. [1][2] >>> They still show up in Nominatim as localities. >>> >> this is approximately what i was thinking should be done with CDPs. >> > > This sounds workable to me, as well. It is agreeable that CDPs not have > an assigned admin_level, I was opening this for discussion to see if there > might be wider consensus. CDPs *are* created by the Bureau of the Census, > but the *SAs are not, they are created by the Office of Management and > Budget (OMB). > > It *does* beg the question of what *should* be tagged as > boundary=administrative *and* have an admin_level tag. For example, my > local University of California campus has a polygon tagged > boundary=administrative, border_type=university (and amenity=university + > name=*). Might/should it also be tagged admin_level=4? Even though it > partially overlaps (and largely is in) City Limits, it *is* an > administrative unit of state government (neither city/local nor county) > with its own police, fire and health-care infrastructure, its own planning > and development functions and a recent lawsuit (since dismissed) between it > and its "host" city, proving it and the city are different entities. > > The same question (admin_level=4) might also be asked about California > State Park boundaries...but they are *already* tagged with admin_level=4, > so at least there is precedent (thanks, Apo42) for state-level "units" with > specific administrative boundaries to be tagged with admin_level. I'd like > that to become widespread among all 50 states, which also implies national > parks get tagged with admin_level=2. State/national parks and state > universities really do have their own administrations, and this implies an > admin_level tag. > > > In states that give civil townships some authority, they are much more >>> important to the identity of an unincorporated area than CDPs. The TIGER >>> boundary import excluded Ohio townships, so Vid the Kid and I have been >>> painstakinglly filling them in. >>> >>> i have started filling in Towns in upstate NY as well. i don't mind >> identifying the Hamlets in some manner, but all they consist of typically >> is a boundary drawn by the Census, and some green-and-white signs posted by >> the NYS DOT in traditional locations by the road side. there's no >> government there, whereas the towns maintain roads, provide the framework >> for the volunteer fire districts, have a zoning & master plan functions, >> inspect buildings & construction, and so forth. >> >> richard >> > > What I found useful to do around here (where there are CDP polygons > entered from TIGER, but they have no admin_level tag) is to add a point > tagged hamlet=* or village=* or town=* (but not necessarily suburb=* as > that implies city subordination, nor city=* as that implies incorporation) > to the "approximate center point" of the CDP polygon, along with a name=* > tag that matches the name of the CDP. This point might logically be a > mathematical centroid, but I have found it more useful to place this point > at a more culturally significant point in the "human center" of the > community designated by the CDP. Usually this is at or near a significant > crossroads, where there might be a market, a church, a school, a small > commercial district, or the like. > > What I am hearing: there are many polygons in OSM with the tag > boundary=administrative, but it makes sense for only some of them to have > an admin_level tag. (This seems odd, but gets solved in the case of CDPs > having their boundary=administrative tag changed to boundary=census). We > agree on nation, state, county and city (2, 4, 6, 8), but there really are > other polygons upon which we might appropriately add an admin_level tag, > state parks being one of the
Re: [Talk-us] An admin_level for CDPs?
On 12/31/12 5:12 PM, Minh Nguyen wrote: I'd argue that not all governmental boundaries need to be tagged as boundary=administrative. In Ohio, we've started to retag CDP boundaries with boundary=census and place=locality but without admin_level. [1][2] They still show up in Nominatim as localities. this is approximately what i was thinking should be done with CDPs. This sounds workable to me, as well. It is agreeable that CDPs not have an assigned admin_level, I was opening this for discussion to see if there might be wider consensus. CDPs *are* created by the Bureau of the Census, but the *SAs are not, they are created by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). It *does* beg the question of what *should* be tagged as boundary=administrative *and* have an admin_level tag. For example, my local University of California campus has a polygon tagged boundary=administrative, border_type=university (and amenity=university + name=*). Might/should it also be tagged admin_level=4? Even though it partially overlaps (and largely is in) City Limits, it *is* an administrative unit of state government (neither city/local nor county) with its own police, fire and health-care infrastructure, its own planning and development functions and a recent lawsuit (since dismissed) between it and its "host" city, proving it and the city are different entities. The same question (admin_level=4) might also be asked about California State Park boundaries...but they are *already* tagged with admin_level=4, so at least there is precedent (thanks, Apo42) for state-level "units" with specific administrative boundaries to be tagged with admin_level. I'd like that to become widespread among all 50 states, which also implies national parks get tagged with admin_level=2. State/national parks and state universities really do have their own administrations, and this implies an admin_level tag. In states that give civil townships some authority, they are much more important to the identity of an unincorporated area than CDPs. The TIGER boundary import excluded Ohio townships, so Vid the Kid and I have been painstakinglly filling them in. i have started filling in Towns in upstate NY as well. i don't mind identifying the Hamlets in some manner, but all they consist of typically is a boundary drawn by the Census, and some green-and-white signs posted by the NYS DOT in traditional locations by the road side. there's no government there, whereas the towns maintain roads, provide the framework for the volunteer fire districts, have a zoning & master plan functions, inspect buildings & construction, and so forth. richard What I found useful to do around here (where there are CDP polygons entered from TIGER, but they have no admin_level tag) is to add a point tagged hamlet=* or village=* or town=* (but not necessarily suburb=* as that implies city subordination, nor city=* as that implies incorporation) to the "approximate center point" of the CDP polygon, along with a name=* tag that matches the name of the CDP. This point might logically be a mathematical centroid, but I have found it more useful to place this point at a more culturally significant point in the "human center" of the community designated by the CDP. Usually this is at or near a significant crossroads, where there might be a market, a church, a school, a small commercial district, or the like. What I am hearing: there are many polygons in OSM with the tag boundary=administrative, but it makes sense for only some of them to have an admin_level tag. (This seems odd, but gets solved in the case of CDPs having their boundary=administrative tag changed to boundary=census). We agree on nation, state, county and city (2, 4, 6, 8), but there really are other polygons upon which we might appropriately add an admin_level tag, state parks being one of them. CDPs, no, but changing their tag from boundary=administrative to boundary=census seems a good idea. And for other *SAs designated by the OMB (not the Bureau of the Census)? What about those? Finally, while there seems to be no argument that New York City is 5, and LAFCos in California are 7, what about MPOs? These are a odd blend of where a locality's transportation planning agency wants to qualify for federal money, so they create an MPO per federal Code which qualifies them for it. This MPO becomes a de facto and de jure administrative boundary, for both local and federal reasons, effectively bypassing state-level government. Do we want to assign MPOs an admin_level tag in OSM? (I'm guessing no, but I feel the need to offer due diligence that at least this question was asked). SteveA California ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] An admin_level for CDPs?
On 12/31/12 5:12 PM, Minh Nguyen wrote: I'd argue that not all governmental boundaries need to be tagged as boundary=administrative. In Ohio, we've started to retag CDP boundaries with boundary=census and place=locality but without admin_level. [1][2] They still show up in Nominatim as localities. this is approximately what i was thinking should be done with CDPs. In states that give civil townships some authority, they are much more important to the identity of an unincorporated area than CDPs. The TIGER boundary import excluded Ohio townships, so Vid the Kid and I have been painstakinglly filling them in. i have started filling in Towns in upstate NY as well. i don't mind identifying the Hamlets in some manner, but all they consist of typically is a boundary drawn by the Census, and some green-and-white signs posted by the NYS DOT in traditional locations by the road side. there's no government there, whereas the towns maintain roads, provide the framework for the volunteer fire districts, have a zoning & master plan functions, inspect buildings & construction, and so forth. richard ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] An admin_level for CDPs?
On 2012-12-31 12:30 PM, stevea wrote: However, there are boundary polygons in OSM which are an odd duck in the USA: a notable one is Census Designated Places (CDPs), which came from the TIGER import. These are a bit like cities in that they are often a similar size and population of a town or rather small city. But they are not strictly cities, in that they are derived from the federal government (not "negotiated" with a state government like a city which is or has incorporated) crafting them for statistical purposes. CDPs have no legal basis as incorporated cities do. In fact, many of the residents of these areas may not even be aware of the boundaries of their own CDP. However, CDPs are useful, as they often give name and shape to a place or area which otherwise might not have one, and frequently the CDP yields the only boundaries for doing so. In other words, CDPs (and others, see below) really are administrative divisions in the USA, we just don't often think of them that way, and so we don't (often) classify them into a hierarchy. I do believe it is proper and useful to do so, but of course we should strive to get to as correct as a consensus/result as we can. I'd argue that not all governmental boundaries need to be tagged as boundary=administrative. In Ohio, we've started to retag CDP boundaries with boundary=census and place=locality but without admin_level. [1][2] They still show up in Nominatim as localities. As you mentioned, CDPs' boundaries have no legal status. There is a reason most residents aren't aware of their CDPs' boundaries: the CDPs themselves are a statistical convenience rather than a fact on the ground. Yes, they were drawn up by an administrative agency, but nothing is administered differently inside them. Unless a data consumer cares about census delineations in particular, place=hamlet POIs are more appropriate for population centers without formal boundaries anyways. In states that give civil townships some authority, they are much more important to the identity of an unincorporated area than CDPs. The TIGER boundary import excluded Ohio townships, so Vid the Kid and I have been painstakinglly filling them in. I have edited http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_admin_level to reflect the reality of this more complicated picture in the USA, some states which don't cleanly follow the 2/4/6/8 model, and at least some of these "more federal" entities. (There are also LAFCos in California, as well as COGs in many states, which are state-defined, in addition to MPOs, which straddle a local/federal level, and PSAs, CSAs, MSAs, and µSAs, defined by the executive branch of the federal government). PSA, CSA, MSA, and µSA boundaries have more bearing on reality than CDPs, but again they don't correspond to any government agencies, so boundary=census would still seem to fit these divisions better. At any given place in the U.S., you're likely to be subject to a variety of government agencies with crisscrossing jurisdictions. Some of these boundaries matter more than others. For example, in Ohio, it makes a whole lot of sense to map townships, even if they sometimes cross city limits. But if I mapped every water board, school district, fire department, and sewer district in my area, the result would be an illegible map. If we considered congressional and state legislative districts to be "administrative" as well, it'd be even worse. COGs and MPOs, on the other hand, often map very cleanly to county lines, as do state DOT districts, state patrol districts, and so on. Perhaps these boundaries matter a lot more in some states than others, but they still seem like highly specialized data that's more appropriate for a mashup than the OSM database. As a starting point, we can keep this discussion simple and decide whether a CDP might rightly be assigned an admin_level of 5, as it is both a federal and quasi-local entity which correctly "lands in the middle" (below state but above county), or whether it might actually be lower than a city (but implying subordinate to? -- doesn't seem correct...) with an admin_level of 9. Just because they can cross county lines doesn't necessarily mean they should sit above counties. Some states allow cities and villages to cross county lines, but they're still admin_level=8. SteveA California [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ohio#CDPs [2] http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/boundary=census -- Minh Nguyen Jabber: m...@1ec5.org; Blog: http://notes.1ec5.org/ ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] An admin_level for CDPs?
funny you should bring this up, i've been pondering CDPs a bit lately and have come to very different conclusions from yours. On 12/31/12 3:30 PM, stevea wrote: I have been pondering the use of the admin_level key in the USA, and have come to the realization that while values 2, 4, 6 and 8 are correct for national, state, county and city boundaries (respectively), it is more complicated than that. It is likely time to end the pretending this oversimplification is sufficient. It is not. A useful tool is http://www.itoworld.com/map/2#fullscreen which shows admin_level boundaries from 2 to 11 (11 for Germany and Netherlands only) in different colors. Yes, it is true in the USA that for those boundaries which are tagged correctly (all 50 states, many or even most counties, some cities) we do see good boundaries and colors. However, there are boundary polygons in OSM which are an odd duck in the USA: a notable one is Census Designated Places (CDPs), which came from the TIGER import. These are a bit like cities in that they are often a similar size and population of a town or rather small city. But they are not strictly cities, in that they are derived from the federal government (not "negotiated" with a state government like a city which is or has incorporated) crafting them for statistical purposes. CDPs have no legal basis as incorporated cities do. In fact, many of the residents of these areas may not even be aware of the boundaries of their own CDP. However, CDPs are useful, as they often give name and shape to a place or area which otherwise might not have one, and frequently the CDP yields the only boundaries for doing so. In other words, CDPs (and others, see below) really are administrative divisions in the USA, we just don't often think of them that way, and so we don't (often) classify them into a hierarchy. I do believe it is proper and useful to do so, but of course we should strive to get to as correct as a consensus/result as we can. the only "real" function of CDPs, so far as i know, is to provide a boundary to scope counting heads by the Census bureau. i'm hesitant to grant full admin boundary status to them. in particular, they don't always nest well within the NYS Town boundaries, and in general the town containing the CDP supplies the government for the CDP. CDPs are mostly around hamlets here. the import of CDPs around here used level 8, so i've used level 7 for the NYS town boundaries i've brought in (manual import, one town boundary at a time.) in the Capital District of NY, the As a starting point, we can keep this discussion simple and decide whether a CDP might rightly be assigned an admin_level of 5, as it is both a federal and quasi-local entity which correctly "lands in the middle" (below state but above county), or whether it might actually be lower than a city (but implying subordinate to? -- doesn't seem correct...) with an admin_level of 9. if they were to remain an admin_boundary (a case which i don't think you've adequately made) 5 is way, way too high given what the CDPs look like around here. richard ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
