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