[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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