[OSM-newbies] Administrative Boundaries

[Steve Bennett]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 7:48 AM, Dudley Ibbett <dudleyibbett at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Do I ignore the admin boundary and draw a separate way for the barrier?
>
> Where a admin boundary runs along a river (these always seem to be separate
> ways) do I link a barrier(wall, hedge) to the river in preference to the
> boundary?
>
> Any general advice on how to map features in association with administrative
> boundaries would be greatly appreciated.

It's been discussed before and there's no real consensus. Different
mapping communities (ie, depending on your local area) do things
differently. Things to consider:
- what's the actual legal definition of the boundary? (Is it one bank
of the river, the centre, a fenceline...?)
- which side of the river is the fence on
- what does the rendering look like - can look bad if a river and an
administrative boundary cross each other randomly
- difficulty of editing, if ways are near each other
- where does the boundary data come from - was it imported? If so,
will it cause problems if you move it to align it with another
feature?
- etc

I would generally only form junctions between boundaries and physical
objects if they're running in parallel - not if they just cross each
other.

Steve