I'd make two comments. 1. Any attempt to make something render on sparse parts of the map, is a rendering issue. Any renderer is free to pre-process the data based on a population and remoteness algorithm if they wish.
2. Personally, I make anything a town if it has services. If it has a pub, a take-away, a supermarket, a post-office, and a fuel station, then it's a town. I save hamlet for a population grouping without any services, and a locality for a place where there is essentially no population clustering. This is a natural skew towards remoter destinations becoming towns, because they are service towns for surrounding areas, rather than necessarily having large populations themselves. Ian. On 4 May 2016 at 18:28, Alex Sims <a...@softgrow.com> wrote: > I’ve had an involvement in this discussion in the past and wonder if a way > forward might be to include an adjusting factor for remoteness. > > If you have a look at the map at > http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/d3310114.nsf/home/remoteness+structure > > which shows the Australian Remoteness Index this suggests that we could > define town, hamlet, etc according to population but then adjust the > population limits downward for remote areas. > > The other point I’d make (as I did some time ago) is that the labels are > “British English” labels and form a hierarchy where the names make sense in > the UK but shouldn’t be taken as a slight against any area. They are merely > a series of words that define the level of population centre. > > Looking at > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:place#Populated_settlements.2C_urban_and_rural > this seems to support and adjustment based on remoteness in the Australian > context. > > Alex > > On 4 May 2016, at 8:11 AM, Warin <61sundow...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 4/05/2016 12:50 AM, Christopher Barham wrote: > > > On 03 May 2016, at 14:22, Warin <61sundow...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > <SNIP> > > Why judge on the population? > > Larger populations get more services - Police, Medical, Education ... they > go hand in hand. > > Populations are usually stated - on the entry signs to towns, villages .. > and collected by the ABS. So verifiable and accessible. > > Yes they do change .. but not by vast amounts quickly. > > Usually the relationship between population centres remains fairly static .. > if one grows so do the surrounding ones. > > Much easier to quickly asses and correctly tag this way. So it satisfies the > KISS principle. > > </SNIP> > > City is not just a function of population - It’s can also be a political > appointment/status? - e.g. Charters Towers and Redcliffe are cities : > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia > > > > Yes there is an 'official designation system' ... subject to political > pressure and separate rules for each state. > I think the best guide we have is the population, certainly I think it is > much better than the officially given 'status'. > > ---------------------- > I did leave out of the original post that the ABS data may include more > 'cities' with populations over 10,000 than the present OSM data base > contains ... yet to sort that out. > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-au mailing list > Talk-au@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au > > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-au mailing list > Talk-au@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au > _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au