[Tagging] [Talk-us] how to tag US townships?

[Alex Mauer]

On 10/21/2010 08:06 AM, Anthony wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 8:32 AM, Greg Troxel<gdt at ir.bbn.com>  wrote:
>> So if we have whole-multiple-counties=5 (eg
>> NYC) county=6 township=7 city/town=8 then it would make sense
>> everywhere.
>
> What would be an example of a township that would be at admin_level=7?
>
> So...if they don't do that much, should they be mapped as admin_level?
>   I was told that school districts don't count, because they don't do
> enough, which has me totally confused as to what it is we're supposed
> to be mapping.

It’s not about whether they do that much; it’s about whether they’re 
administered by a government.  School boards are a part of the 
government yes, but they’re don’t govern the districts that they cover.

Compare to postal codes…yes, it’s from an agency of the government but a 
post office does not govern the area that it serves.

> Is there anyone else who, in the United States, uses the notion of
> admin_level?  In other words, the notion that administrative districts
> across the entire country can be ranked from 1-9 (or 1 to whatever)?
> The big problem is that that administrative districts in the US aren't
> really hierarchical, or, at least, many of them are not.

The point of admin_level is *not* primarily to record which governments 
are above another.  It’s to indicate which governments across different 
countries and states are (approximately) equivalent.  e.g. in the US, 
counties are counties are counties are Louisiana parishes are Alaska 
Boroughs are Virginia counties and cities and are at the same level as 
municipalities in Mexico, /powiaty/ in Poland, districts in Turkey, etc. 
  It doesn’t matter whether that “thing” is higher or lower than 
townships or states or provinces or what-have-you.  It just matters that 
they’re pretty much equivalents among countries.  The details may 
differ, but they’re close to the same thing.

It’s useful for making a map that looks consistent everywhere without 
having to have rules based on every single possible name for every 
administrative area across all sorts of countries, states, and other 
levels of bureaucracy.  There’s a nice list of names for things if you 
want to see the huge mass of possibilities [1].

If you want to give the name of the administrative entity, use 
border_type [2].

—Alex Mauer “hawke”.

1. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:admin_level#admin_level
2. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:border_type