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

Peter Budny peterb at gatech.edu
Fri Oct 22 06:05:09 BST 2010


Anthony <osm at inbox.org> writes:

> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Alex Mauer <hawke at hawkesnest.net> wrote:
>> 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?
>
> This question of mine was quoted but still not answered.

To summarize/quote from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_divisions_of_the_United_States

Most states decentralize, typically in three tiers but at least two and
sometimes more than three.

Tier 1: state (admin_level=4)
Tier 2: county/borough/parish (admin_level=6)
Tier 3: township, an administrative division of a county (admin_level=7)

"Counties exist to provide general local support of state government
activities... but without providing most of the services one associates
with municipalities.  The township provides further localized services
to the public in areas that are not part of a municipality."

"Township is an intermediate civic designation between city and county;
cities sometimes cross county boundaries, townships never do."

Cities are normally tier 4 (3 if a state doesn't use townships), but
sometimes (e.g. in Virginia) they are treated as equivalent in level to
counties.

And we already discussed how in some states, cities/towns overlap with
townships, while in others a piece of land is either part of one or the
other.  So in at least some cases, there's a need for admin_level=7 to
express the hierarchy correctly.

>>> 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.
>
> Absolutely they do.

I'm going to cut you off right there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_district

"School districts are a form of special-purpose district..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_district

"Special-purpose districts or special district governments in the United
States are independent governmental units that exist SEPARATELY FROM,
and with substantial administrative and fiscal independence from,
general purpose local governments such as county, municipal, and
township governments." (all-caps emphasis added)

According to the US Census report,

"[T]he Census Bureau recognizes five basic types of local governments.
Three of these are general-purpose governments: county, municipal, and
township governments. The other two types are special- purpose
governments: school district governments and special district
governments."

Because they are specialized, rather than general-purpose, I don't see
how school districts belong in admin_level=.

>>> 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.
>
> Then we shouldn't use numbers, or if we're going to use numbers we
> should assign those numbers in random order.

Maybe you're right, but numbers are conveniently interlingual.  If we
didn't use numbers, we'd have to invent some terminology, which is
already a problem because even within a single country we can't agree on
whether to call things counties, parishes, or boroughs.

And if we're going to use numbers, they might as well be sequential.
Who wants to remember that countries are admin_level=1586374 but states
are admin_level=483?  The fact that numbers come with a known,
easy-to-understand ordering fits so nicely with the fact that /most/
geo-political divisions are roughly hierarchical.

>> 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.
>
> Same level?  What does the level mean if you aren't saying which one
> is above the other?  Saying that there are levels implies one is above
> the other.

What Anthony wrote seemed quite clear.  admin_level= allows for
international comparisons, so we can see from a map that the US is
divided into states which are divided into counties, Mexico is divided
into estados which are divided into minicipios, Japan is divided into
ken (prefectures) which are divided into combinations of shi (cities),
cho (towns), and mura (villages), etc.
-- 
Peter Budny  \
Georgia Tech  \
CS PhD student \



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