I absolutely realize that my experience is with the USA and not Australia, but (in a VERY broad-brush way) the logical mappings between how federal=2, state=4 and admin_level=6 is almost always the "sub-state / local-ish" government authorities (in the USA it is almost always what we call a "county," meaning a subdivision of the state, but counties often provide much "more local" government services) in both countries is quite similar. Importantly, for "unincorporated" parts of counties, these "fall under" an admin_level=6 "area" at the level of the entirety of the county itself, not with any specific smaller "boundary" (as these don't exist for unincorporated areas) WITHIN the county. Usually / often, a node specifies these unincorporated area, tagged place=* (and the value is often something smaller, like hamlet or village). Please do not add an admin_level=6 tag here, that's redundant tagging.
Given the decade+ I've been facilitating admin_level in the USA (in wiki, in discussions, in the map data...) I would say you are on the right track with this "local government authorities get admin_level=6." This is true for unincorporated areas (within counties in the USA): they are "surrounded by" In the USA, for (usually incorporated) cities, these are something else, and it is our convention to use admin_level=8 for such cities (cities DO subordinate to the counties they are in, but in an independent way, usually), which is to say that they "more directly" subordinate to the state (at admin_level=4); a city that is an 8 is geographically located in a county (6), but a city can also correctly be said to subordinate more directly to a state (4) by virtue of it being the state constitution and state statutes (the "California Government Code" in my state) which crafts the legal framework for what a city "is" (within any given state) and how it is chartered / gains its independence (as a usually-incorporated entity independent of the state/county which it is inside of). It seems Oz uses 9 for "locality borders," different than USA uses 8 for cities (or towns which are incorporated), that's a minor quibble that is a bit off-topic here. So, with unincorporated areas, they don't really get a boundary=* polygon tagged with an admin_level, rather they are tagged with a place=* tag (appropriate to population, amenities and/or relative hierarchy in the region), but no specific admin_level tag, as they are simply "found inside of" a polygon which is already (usually) tagged admin_level=6, and that is what makes THEM 6, as well. These shouldn't get an additional polygon or tag which tags them with admin_level=6, as that would be redundant with their "county." Or whatever the word is in Australia, I think you call them "Shire / Council" boundaries. If a shire / council boundary is tagged with admin_level=6 (and these are found within Australian states tagged admin_level=4, which are in turn found within the country-level boundary of Oz which is tagged admin_level=2)...you've got it and are largely done. Unincorporated areas don't really need to have their admin_level specified, as these areas are quite likely very "unspecific" (and unincorporated) and their "surrounding 6" (shire / council) already captures this semantic — nothing really to add beyond that. If there ARE "locality borders" inside of a 6, tag them with 9 and be done. But please don't tag "unincorporated, unspecified boundaries" with anything, as it seems you really can't. The surrounding shire / council already specifies the 6 you seem to be thinking of. Adding a place=* node for an unincorporated community? Sure, we do that (in the USA), too. But we don't add admin_level tags to those, as it isn't correct to do so. I hope this helps! On Jun 16, 2024, at 3:51 PM, Brendan Barnes <brenbar...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi all, just seeing if there's consensus on what administration level > unincorporated areas should have in Australia? > > In Victoria (and potentially other states), the unincorporated areas are > administered by state-level statutory authorities and departments, so I'm > thinking admin_level=6 to match equivalent local government authorities. > > ACT is an exception obviously, with the unincorporated area matching the > territory border, so it takes on the higher order admin_level=4. > > https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Australian_Tagging_Guidelines/Land_and_boundaries#Administration_Levels > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_Australia#Unincorporated_areas _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
