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<p>On 2020-07-30 12:26, Alan Mackie wrote:</p>
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<div>IMO the logic behind putting the EU as admin_level=1 would have meant that the United States of America, the USSR and Australia would have been made admin_level=1 when they were formed from their preceding entities (if OSM had existed at those times). </div>
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<div>I would suggest that contrary to the preceding thread: if and when the EU becomes as unified as the above examples it would make more sense to put the EU as a whole as admin_level=2 and add one to all boundaries of the states and subareas already mapped within it. </div>
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<div>There's nothing magic about the actual numbers of course. It's about the relationships between the levels in a hierarchy, some measure of global uniformity and consistency, and also about parallel hierarchies which may or may not be related to each other.</div>
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<div>The EU is «composed-of» whole member states. It has all the attributes of a governmental administrative body - with the executive, parliament and justicial branches impacting citizens directly. I would say it deserves a place in the OSM admin hierarchy, at a higher level than the member states; admin_level=1 is the obvious choice.</div>
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