[talk-au] cities changed to towns

Alex Sims alex at softgrow.com
Wed Dec 12 05:59:42 GMT 2012


On 12/12/2012 2:54 PM, Nick Hocking wrote:
> My view on all this is that if a place has officially been designated 
> as a city then we must tag it as such. If it is offically a town then 
> we must tag it as a town etc.
> If we can't find any official designation then either common sense of 
> maybe a state specific rule could be applied.
> Anyway, in my neck of the woods Goulburn really MUST revert to a city 
> or we risk alienating all NSW residents and making our map 
> unacceptable to a large number of potential users.
I had a look at cities by population from http://www.statoids.com/yau.html.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:place defines city "These are 
defined by charter or other governmental designation in some territories 
and are a matter of judgement in others. Should normally have a 
population of at least 100,000 people and be larger than nearby towns. "

The only real issue where there might be a conflict with OSMI is 
Charters Towers with a population of 8893 which is well below 100,000. 
So it might be the Australian special case. There are three rural cities 
with population less than 10,000 in SA, Goyder, Wakefield and Light but 
they are regional names, not those of their towns (Burra, Balaklava and 
Kapunda).

As to towns "often with a population of 10,000 people and good range of 
local facilities including schools, medical facilities etc and 
traditionally a market. In areas of low population towns may have 
significantly lower populations." and the smallest Australian one is 
Jabiru NT with 1696.

So maybe as a way forward for tagging Australia
Population > 100,000 - City
100,000 > Population > 10,000 - Town unless designated as a city
10,000 > Population > 1,000 - Village unless designated as Town or 
Charters Tower which is designated a city
1,000 > Population - Hamlet

That should keep locals happy and still be globally consistent?

Alex



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