[talk-au] place=? An oldie but no past conclusion.

[Ian Sergeant]

I'd make two comments.

1. Any attempt to make something render on sparse parts of the map, is
a rendering issue.  Any renderer is free to pre-process the data based
on a population and remoteness algorithm if they wish.

2. Personally, I make anything a town if it has services.  If it has a
pub, a take-away, a supermarket, a post-office, and a fuel station,
then it's a town.  I save hamlet for a population grouping without any
services, and a locality for a place where there is essentially no
population clustering.  This is a natural skew towards remoter
destinations becoming towns, because they are service towns for
surrounding areas, rather than necessarily having large populations
themselves.

Ian.



On 4 May 2016 at 18:28, Alex Sims <alex at softgrow.com> wrote:
> I’ve had an involvement in this discussion in the past and wonder if a way
> forward might be to include an adjusting factor for remoteness.
>
> If you have a look at the map at
> http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/d3310114.nsf/home/remoteness+structure
>
> which shows the Australian Remoteness Index this suggests that we could
> define town, hamlet, etc according to population but then adjust the
> population limits downward for remote areas.
>
> The other point I’d make (as I did some time ago) is that the labels are
> “British English” labels and form a hierarchy where the names make sense in
> the UK but shouldn’t be taken as a slight against any area. They are merely
> a series of words that define the level of population centre.
>
> Looking at
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:place#Populated_settlements.2C_urban_and_rural
> this seems to support and adjustment based on remoteness in the Australian
> context.
>
> Alex
>
> On 4 May 2016, at 8:11 AM, Warin <61sundowner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/05/2016 12:50 AM, Christopher Barham wrote:
>
>
> On 03 May 2016, at 14:22, Warin <61sundowner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> <SNIP>
>
> Why judge on the population?
>
> Larger populations get more services - Police, Medical, Education ... they
> go hand in hand.
>
> Populations are usually stated - on the entry signs to towns, villages ..
> and collected by the ABS. So verifiable and accessible.
>
> Yes they do change .. but not by vast amounts quickly.
>
> Usually the relationship between population centres remains fairly static ..
> if one grows so do the surrounding ones.
>
> Much easier to quickly asses and correctly tag this way. So it satisfies the
> KISS principle.
>
> </SNIP>
>
> City is not just a function of population - It’s can also be a political
> appointment/status? - e.g. Charters Towers and Redcliffe are cities :
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Australia
>
>
>
> Yes there is an 'official designation system' ... subject to political
> pressure and separate rules for each state.
> I think the best guide we have is the population, certainly I think it is
> much better than the officially given 'status'.
>
> ----------------------
> I did leave out of the original post that the ABS data may include more
> 'cities' with populations over 10,000 than the present OSM data base
> contains ... yet to sort that out.
>
>
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