[Tagging] Tagging Metropolis

[M∡rtin Koppenhoefer]

2011/1/18 Robert Elsenaar <robert at elsenaar.info>:
> Great idea to reactivate is again. New times, new ideas.
>
> I think capitals should be tagged to be Metropolis to also when they do not
> have enough inhibitans to be granted as one.


-1, what is the point of this? The key: capital already tells you, if
it's a capital or not, and whoever makes a map can decide based on
this information how to display them. If every capital became a
Metropolis, the new key would be much less valuable.

Cities in Europe that might be candidates for metropoles:
London (several reasons, capital of the empire ;-), finance,
infrastructure, art, culture, ...)
Paris (several reasons, capital of the french empire ;-), art, culture, ...)
(Marseille, infrastructure)
Barcelona, Madrid
Berlin, (Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne?)
(Lisboa)
Napoli, Roma, Milano, (Venezia)
Vienna (UN)
Bruxelles (EU)
Warszawa
(Budapest)
(Praha)
Москва́
(Минск)
Istanbul
Zürich, (Genève)
and some others
...

This list would have to be discussed and amended/shortened (sorry to
everyone I forgot), some cities play an important role on a global
level (like London), others are only of regional importance but can't
compete in a Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Rio de
Janeiro-League.

We would have to decide if our classification is meant to be relative
to the region (read: continent / e.g. Europe) or at a global level.

I agree with you though, that there might be cities worth a tag even
not beeing in the multimillion-inhabitants region, so this should not
be judged merely by the population but other factors would be
important as well (infrastructure (port/airport), culture, economy,
seat of international organizations)

Population does play an important role though. It is not easy to
compare the numbers, as they sometimes refer to the city limits and in
other cases to the whole region around. When looking at the city
limits one should be aware that those are not "naturally given", i.e.
they are man made and can change / can be used to make the numbers
seem bigger or smaller (besides other factors, like in less developed
countries the numbers might be mere estimates). I suggest to refer
generally to the metropol region and not to the city boundary when
doing this comparison.

Fortunately there is an incredible amount of research and publications
on this ;-)

some selected publications / sites:
http://esa.un.org/unup/index.asp?panel=2
http://demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf
http://www.unhabitat.org/

cheers,
Martin