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

[Peter Budny]

Anthony <osm at inbox.org> writes:

> On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 1:05 AM, Peter Budny <peterb at gatech.edu> wrote:
>> 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
>
> [snip]
>
>> So in at least some cases, there's a need for admin_level=7 to
>> express the hierarchy correctly.
>
> What would be an example of a township that would be at admin_level=7?
>
> I'm not saying you're wrong.  I just couldn't come up with an example.
>  The townships that I've seen which overlap with cities/towns aren't
> administrative areas, they just settlements.

My bad, I didn't realize you wanted a specific example.  Let me see if I
can find one.

It looks like Richmond, Indiana and Wayne Township are an example.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township_(United_States)#Civil_townships
which cites the US Census document I linked earlier, Indiana has
township governments that cover all of its area and population.  Thus, I
presume, Richmond is an incorporated city, but Wayne Township also
retains its governance over the areas included in Richmond, putting
Richmond under control of 5 governments (federal, state, county,
township, and city/municipal).

Maybe someone else a little more familiar with this has more examples?

>>>>> 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.
> [snip]
>> Because they are specialized, rather than general-purpose, I don't see
>> how school districts belong in admin_level=.
>
> Fair enough, but that's a completely different argument from "they
> don't govern the districts that they cover".
>
> I'm not sure what "general-purpose" means, either.  There are a lot of
> counties, as pointed out, which don't do much of anything (in fact,
> there are a lot of counties that don't do anything at all).

Good question, really.  There's an explanation in the US Census
document, but it's not very easy to understand:

"A government is an organized entity which, in addition to having
governmental character, has sufficient discretion in the management of
its own affairs to distinguish it as separate from the administrative
structure of any other governmental unit."

"To be counted as a government, an entity must possess all three of the
attributed reflected in the foregoing definition: existence as an
organized entity, governmental character, and substantial autonomy."

Elsewhere it says:

"Special district governments are independent, special-purpose
governmental units... that exist as separate entities with substantial
administrative and fiscal independence from general-purpose local
governments."

"Special district governments provide specific services that are not
being supplied by existing general-purpose governments."

Frankly, it's a lot of text and not very clear (what else would you
expect from the US govt?) but the gist seems to be that they don't
explicitly define general-purpose [1]; they simply single out things which
they consider special-purpose and everything that's left is
general-purpose.


Note 1: At one point they even write, "county, municipal, and township
governments are readily recognized and generally present no serious
problem of classification." Thanks, that really goes a long way to
describe your classification... *grumble*
-- 
Peter Budny  \
Georgia Tech  \
CS PhD student \