[talk-au] Suburbs in Australia

[Ben Kelley]

Hi.

Suburb can mean an area bounded by a gazetted boundary. There is a sense in
which town is similar to suburb, in the sense of how the boundary is
defined. I am pretty sure the UK is different in this regard.

I don't know if West Pymble is a gazetted suburb (I think yes), but it
would then have a boundary. The name you see is likely a node, possibly
placed within the gazetted boundary for West Pymble, or possibly not.

See the recent discussion on this list for town vs city, in the OSM sense.

  - Ben.
On 20/12/2012 9:35 PM, "Darren Burt" <burt.darren at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi
>
> I wrote a long question at OSm help and they referred me to you guys. Hope
> you can help me help OSM.
> -------
> Hi
>
> I've been editing around the area, and noticed that the location of the
> [suburb][1] is not what I would have called a reference to West Pymble. I
> would have called West Pymble the shopping centre located [here][2]. I note
> the following with respect to Sydney:
>
> a) Cities. There are few 'cities' in comparison, to , eg California, where
> I would have compared many cities to be 'suburbs'. It's probably a
> population thing. There seems to be a trend towards more cities, (eg
> Sydney, Parramatta, Bankstown, Penrith etc) but in general usage, most
> places are referred to principally as 'suburbs'.
>
> b) Towns in general are referring to country centres. If I 'went to town'
> in Sydney, I would be going to Sydney City centre, eg Town Hall station.
> This is in contrast, eg to the UK, where many of the places I would have
> referred to as suburbs were referred to as towns.
>
> These are probably a historical growth thing. Sydney has generally
> expanded organically from a central point.
>
> c) As a general definition, if somebody referred to just the suburb, they
> would refer to the principal activity centre of that area. In most cases
> that is the main shopping or commercial area. Sometimes it might be a train
> station. Sometimes something else. But if you drive to the West Pymble
> located above, you are in the middle of a residential area. And here's
> where things extrapolate.
>
> **IMPORTANT**
> Please refer to this recent article about [Apple Maps in Australia][3]. My
> West Pymble example is trivial. However, in Australia is not just a matter
> of inconvenience.
>
> I'd welcome any other Aussies kicking in their opinions as well. As I
> said, my example is trivial, but it could turn wickedly wrong on some of
> the cattle stations that are [24000 square kms][4] (6m acres). Centre of
> that (geographically) could see you 100s or 1000s of kms away from help,
> and be life or death.
>
> I went looking at the definition of suburb and [found][5] that it refers
> to the 'centre of the suburb'. It is not clear if this is meant to be the
> geographic centre or some other type of centre. This need clarification.
>
> Look. I'm new to this editing and everything. I am hoping to get some
> clarification on this to help with not just this suburb, but to provide
> valuable guidance for other suburbs as well. I would request an update to
> the wiki as well to help clarify this.
>
> Appreciate your help.
>
>
>   [1]: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?**lat=-33.756665&lon=151.128885&**
> zoom=18&layers=M<http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-33.756665&lon=151.128885&zoom=18&layers=M>
>   [2]: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?**lat=-33.761018&lon=151.128327&**
> zoom=18&layers=M<http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-33.761018&lon=151.128327&zoom=18&layers=M>
>   [3]: http://www.geekosystem.com/**apple-maps-australia/<http://www.geekosystem.com/apple-maps-australia/>
>   [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Anna_Creek_station<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_station>
>   [5]: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/**wiki/Suburb<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Suburb>
>
> -----
>
> ______________________________**_________________
> Talk-au mailing list
> Talk-au at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.**org/listinfo/talk-au<http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/attachments/20121220/b7c3a6cf/attachment-0001.html>