[talk-au] cities changed to towns- I made Alice Springs a city.

Wed Dec 12 23:40:03 GMT 2012

I agree we need to think about the map, not the rules.

look at the first map you see when you type OSM into google.

Its a map of europe.

It shows London, prague, and warsaw but not paris or berlin.
Lisbon but not madrid, budapest but not rome.

And here, at a slightly different zoom level we get Sydney, Melbourne, Albury and Cooma but not the nations capital - canberra.
In fact, Queenbeyan appears before CAnberra.

 I've just noticed that Queenbeyan also appears before Alice Springs, for goodness sake.

In my opinion, if the guidelines generate these counter intuitive maps , then the guidelines are wrong.

I have made Alice Springs a city, but feel free to change it back if this violates some rule.

We are map makers, not programmers, which means we interpret  the physical world through a cultural lense to make a document that helps others. 
Embrace subjectivity. The number of people living in an area is only one reason a settlement should show up on a map. I would argue one of the lesser reasons, unless the purpoe of that map is to map population density.

cheers, adrian.

> From: talk-au-request at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Talk-au Digest, Vol 66, Issue 13
> To: talk-au at openstreetmap.org
> Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 12:00:04 +0000
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>    1. (Paul HAYDON)
>    2. Re: cities changed to towns (Steve Bennett)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 21:37:43 +1100
> From: Paul HAYDON <cadmanager at live.com.au>
> To: Talk-AU OSM <talk-au at openstreetmap.org>
> Subject: Re: [talk-au] cities changed to towns
> Message-ID: <SNT002-W16383AFC8C960153517DEEA8C480 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Hi everyone, Firstly, a qualification:I've not read the Wiki on this subject, so this is simply my opinion without the support of guidelines/rules/etc. I believe, having authored/compiled some detail Magellan maps for eXplorist GPSrs this year, that more important than guidelines or rules that are documented, there needs to be a hierarchy in the data.  Obviously, a city in Europe will be much larger than one in Australia, and similarly, ours will be much larger than those in more remote countries.  And the size differs, not only in population, but also in geographical area (since population densities also vary). For example, let me just describe the east coast of N.S.W., centred on Sydney: I reckon Sydney, Newcastle, and Wollongong are "no-brainers" - they're cities.  But also, Gosford and Wyong on the Central Coast should be classified the same. Now, while I'm sure such places as Parramatta are also cities (I've not verified this, but I'm pretty sure), from a mapping perspective, Sydney is probably all that is needed. So, on a broad view, you will see Sydney, with Newcastle to the north, and Wollongong to the South, as well as Gosford/Wyong midway between Sydney & Newcastle.  The next level should then be those centres within the metropolitan areas which warrant attention: in Sydney, such places as Strathfield, Parramatta, Penrith, Chatswood, Hornsby, Hurstville & Sutherland (plus, I'm sure there are others). IMHO, keeping sight of the end-use (i.e. a map) is more important than strictly applying a "rule" based purely on numbers (although, when in doubt, these can be helpful).  So places like Parramatta might not be classified as "cities" when in fact they are, while others in more remote parts of our country might be classified, even though they might not be "cities". Any thoughts?  Cheers,Paul. 		 	   		  
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> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 22:56:37 +1100
> From: Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com>
> To: Alex Sims <alex at softgrow.com>
> Cc: talk-au <talk-au at openstreetmap.org>
> Subject: Re: [talk-au] cities changed to towns
> Message-ID:
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> 
> >I would want "place=city" to refer to an urban populated area of at least
> 100,000 people as per http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:place#Values
> 
> >
> > I've taken to fixing errors from Geofabrik OSMI and have changed places to
> > match the schema above. Whilst I find hamlet & village grate on me as
> > words, they are merely "code" for an object to be mapped. It's only really
> > issue because I speak English (Australian) and the OSM schema was developed
> > in English (United Kingdom) that there is an issue. If we all spoke Finnish
> > or Swahili we wouldn't be having this discussion now.
> >
> 
> Ok, well what might be an obvious "error" to you is correct to someone
> else. There are many OSM tags that have different meanings in different
> parts of the world. It would be good to be consistent within Australia, but
> it's not important whether our meaning precisely matches the meaning in the
> UK or some other country.
> 
> Looking at the wiki page you cite, it's clear that those definitions are
> intended as rules of thumb: "Populations of villages vary widely in
> different territories but will nearly always be less than 10,000 people,
> often a lot less."; "[Cities s]hhould normally have a population of at
> least 100,000 people and be larger than nearby towns." Normally, in densely
> populated areas, that is. Applying that cut off in Victoria would lead to
> only Melbourne and Geelong qualifying, with Bendigo and Ballarat just
> missing out.
> 
> Steve
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