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<div style="font-family:Arial;">I agree that there is a need to improve our classification of places. However I think that taking population as the sole criterion will create more discrepancies than we have already. <br></div>
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<div style="font-family:Arial;">For example, I live in a Sydney suburb that has a population greater than the gazetted "state suburb" of Sydney (roughly the CBD area). If we adopted a strictly population-based criterion, my suburb and many others with more than 10,000 people would be "towns" in OSM and Sydney CBD be a "town". My suburb has about the same population as the rural city of Griffith, NSW. I think Griffith is a city but my suburb is not. <br></div>
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<div style="font-family:Arial;">The figure extracted from the OSM population data shows Nowra with over 32,000 population. On the ABS website, the ABS census data for 2011 shows the "state suburb" of Nowra having 9,200 people .. just a village. If we add the adjacent areas of North Nowra, South Nowra, West Nowra and Bomaderry, then ABS shows the "Nowra/Bomaderry Urban Centre" which includes the areas around Nowra as having approx. 28,000 people. So do we show Bomaderry as part of greater Nowra, or is it a village/town in its own right? Does North Nowra exist in its own right as a suburb/village or is it just part of the larger Nowra? <br></div>
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<div style="font-family:Arial;">There is also the issue of population density. 500 people living in a couple of square kilometres might be a village. Another 500 people living in a gazetted location of hundreds of square kilometres could hardly be said to be living in a village even though their location has an equivalent population.<br></div>
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<div style="font-family:Arial;">I won't keep going on and on, but there are many questions thrown up by relying on population alone as the criterion for determining if a place is a city or town or whatever. I think it has to be a sort of "common sense" decision taking population into account but other factors as well. But I do support the need to try to clarify our classifications and appreciate the difficulty in resolving the issue.<br></div>
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<div>On Fri, May 13, 2016, at 07:11 PM, Warin wrote:<br></div>
<blockquote type="cite"><div>On 5/13/2016 11:36 AM, Warin wrote:<br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:cedd5ab1-7e8d-0107-78aa-6c92024fba92@gmail.com"><div>On 5/6/2016 9:51 AM, Simon Slater
wrote:<br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:2847499.ETHX8BUy8A@toshiba650.pyevet.mynet"><pre>On Thu, 5 May 2016 10:10:35 AM Ian Sergeant wrote:
<br></pre><blockquote type="cite"><pre>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.
<br></pre></blockquote><pre>Post offices may be a good guide. 25 years ago there were at least 4 post offices
between here (Swan Hill) and Kerang. Now there is only one at Lake Boga, but
all the other post codes are still in place, mail routing through either
Kerang or Swan Hill.<br></pre></blockquote><div style="font-family:Arial;"> </div>
<pre>Australia post has;<br></pre><ul><li><pre>Post Office (PO) and<br></pre></li><li><pre>Local Post Office (LPO)<br></pre></li></ul><pre>The LPO is usually smaller and within another business ..usually a local convenience store.
<br></pre><pre>The ABS has this
<br></pre><pre><a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/1d90c1ef4ac928d5ca2570ec0018e4f7%21OpenDocument">http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/1d90c1ef4ac928d5ca2570ec0018e4f7!OpenDocument</a><br></pre><pre>"<b><span style="font-family:Arial" class="font">Identifying towns</span></b>
<span style="font-family:Arial" class="font">In this review </span><b><span style="font-family:Arial" class="font">small towns</span></b><span style="font-family:Arial" class="font"> have been defined as population centres with between 1,000 and 19,999 people.
Towns might ideally be distinguished from cities and from smaller rural communities according to functional criteria, such as the
presence or absence of various educational, medical, recreational and retail services, together perhaps with administrative criteria such as
whether or not a city or town council operated from within the town.
While such conceptual distinctions might be made, it is difficult to put such definitions into practice. The above population size was therefore
considered the most suitable alternative which would generally encompass these criteria."</span><br></pre><pre><span style="font-family:Arial" class="font">
</span><br></pre><pre><span style="font-family:Arial" class="font">I tend to concur with this - simplest to implement and verify.
I do note the 'medical' services that ABS have for identifying towns etc, that may be a usefull criteria in addition to number of pubs, petrol stations etc.
</span><br></pre><p><br></p></blockquote><pre>I have gotten some 1,400 'towns from the OSM data base .. many of these have no population given, but from those that do;<br></pre><pre>Penrith 178465
Bunbury 64385
Maitland 61431
Palmerston 46618
Melton 45624
Port Macquarie 41723
Sunbury 33062
Pakenham 32911
Nowra 32556
Albany 30656
Devonport 29051
Goulburn 21484
Busselton 21407
Ocean Grove 16093
Bacchus Marsh 14913
Port Hedland 13772
Torquay 13339
Coolum Beach 13154
Broome 12766
Batemans Bay 12000
Lara 11192
Drysdale 10927
Compare this to the 'cities';
Charters Towers 8,234
Charleville 4,700
Caloundra 3,550
Winton 1,337
Winton and Charleville 'cities' when Broome is not? No .. sorry that makes no sense, even when taking into account 'remoteness' and services.
And the other end of 'towns';
Marble Bar 194
Coral Bay 190
Coorow 176
Guilderton 146
Marvel Loch 98
Popanyinning 87
Betoota 0
Ooldea 0
Ooldea used to have a hermit, he could still be kicking ... the others there were railway workers with homes elsewhere.
Betoota used to have 1, but he died.
I don't think anyone could call these 'towns'! Even on a 'services' scale.
<u>There is a clear disparity here. </u>
I hope to get all the 'towns' populations that are missing entered from the ABS census 2011, and then look again at these 'towns'.
I have entered all the 'cities' population data that was missing, so that bit is done.
I am yet to get the villages list, if I do!
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As a reminder of what I first proposed
<span style="font-family:menlo,consolas,"courier new",monospace" class="font">OSM wiki presently has by population
city>100,000>town>10,000>village>200>hamlet>100</span>
<u><span style="font-family:menlo,consolas,"courier new",monospace" class="font">
</span></u><span style="font-family:menlo,consolas,"courier new",monospace" class="font">I think for Australia;</span>
<span style="font-family:menlo,consolas,"courier new",monospace" class="font">city>10,000>town>1,000>village>100>hamlet>10
</span>
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