<div dir="ltr"><div>Hi <br><br><br></div><div>The West Midlands is administered as a unit for fire police and public transport rather than individually by the 7 constituent LAs. I don't know where that places it, but use the information as you see fit<br>
<br></div><div>Regards<br><br></div><div>Brian<br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 20 February 2014 11:34, Colin Smale <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:colin.smale@xs4all.nl" target="_blank">colin.smale@xs4all.nl</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
<div style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif">
<p><span style="font-family:'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12px">Hi,</span></p>
<p>In the last couple of years I have put in a lot of hours maintaining the UK's admin boundaries in OSM. Having started in Kent (home territory) I have gradually been fanning out to cover more and more of the country. Although there is a lot of consistency in the tagging, one thing I noticed is that there are two schools of thought regarding Metropolitan Districts. These are a subdivision of Metropolitan Counties, of which there are six: Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire.</p>
<p>The Metropolitan Counties still exist in law, and certain functions (e.g. Fire&Rescue, public transport) are often governed at that level. The Councils no longer exist as bodies however. The Metropolitan Districts (which are styled as Boroughs or Cities) are therefore effectively 99% the same as "unitary authorities".</p>
<p>In the situation between 1974 and 1986 the tagging would be obvious: both the County and the District would be boundary=administrative, with admin_level=6 for the county and admin_level=8 for the districts. In OSM, things have diverged a bit since then, and proper Unitary Authorities are tagged as admin_level=6 putting them on the same level as Non-Metropolitan Counties.</p>
<p>The current situation in OSM is:</p>
<p><span style="font-family:'courier new',courier"> admin_level</span><br><span style="font-family:'courier new',courier">County county tag county district</span><br><span style="font-family:'courier new',courier">GM ceremonial n/a 8</span><br>
<span style="font-family:'courier new',courier">Merseyside ceremonial n/a 8</span><br><span style="font-family:'courier new',courier">S Yorks administrative 6 8</span><br><span style="font-family:'courier new',courier">T&Wear ceremonial n/a 6</span><br>
<span style="font-family:'courier new',courier">W Mids administrative 6 8</span><br><span style="font-family:'courier new',courier">W Yorks ceremonial n/a 8</span></p>
<p>I would like to normalise this tagging, and looking at the current usage above and the wiki[1], propose that the Metropolitan Counties become boundary=ceremonial, and the Metropolitan Districts become boundary=administrative, admin_level=8.</p>
<p>Are there any objections or other comments? If not I will make the changes in a few days' time.</p>
<p>By the way, I have been creating a wiki page to try to give an overview of UK boundary tagging at [2]. Please look at it - any comments, corrections, additions etc are most welcome, and if people feel it's useful the content can be moved into a more "obvious" place in the wiki.</p>
<p>Thanks,<br>Colin</p>
<p>[1] <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Admin_level" target="_blank">http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Admin_level</a><br>[2] <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Csmale/ukboundaries" target="_blank">http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Csmale/ukboundaries</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<div> </div>
</div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
Talk-GB mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org">Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org</a><br>
<a href="https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb" target="_blank">https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br></div>