[Tagging] how to tag US townships?

M∡rtin Koppenhoefer dieterdreist at gmail.com
Wed Oct 20 19:43:59 BST 2010


2010/10/20 Alex Mauer <hawke at hawkesnest.net>:
> IMO that just means that rendering needs to be based purely and directly on
> population numbers, or we need some higher numbers (1 000 000 =
> metropolis[1]  10 000 000 = megacity[2]? ) It might be useful to use a
> relation to group separate legal-cities with their core city into a
> metropolis, but that might be overcomplicating things.)


that's an obvious and simple approach, but won't satisfy on the long
run to get well labelled maps and it won't help if you want to put
emphasis according to something different then population.

I give you an example of such an edge case where simple algorithms
won't help: Tübingen, a small town (87.788 inh.) in the south west of
Germany:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.5194&lon=9.0602&zoom=14&layers=M
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:De_Merian_Sueviae_242.jpg&filetimestamp=20060905162004

it has an important university since 1477 (including big university
hospitals), a castle and is "capital" of a "government district"
(Regierungsbezirk = one level below "land"). Therefore it was usually
depicted on old paper maps before Reutlingen, which is only 10 km away
and has 112.132 inhabitants but no university (it has several colleges
though, one dating back to 1855) and no castle (because it was an
independent town (Freie Reichsstadt)).
Reutlingen
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4898&lon=9.2214&zoom=13&layers=M
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Re%C3%BCtlingen.jpg&filetimestamp=20080701051448


I guess that Tübingen is more known to the average German then
Reutlingen, but that's just a guess. As written before, traditionally
cartographers gave more importance to Tübingen, while in current
automated internet cartography Tübingen looses almost always against
Reutlingen. Maybe this is a reflection of a changed interpretation of
importance but I fear it is simply a loss in quality...

Cheers,
Martin



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