[talk-au] admin_level, suburbs and rendering; should the order be updated?

[Dian Ågesson]

Hello,

I wanted to prompt a conversation about admin_level tagging in Australia 
and whether the current levels are appropriate.

For context, I have been slowly changing suburbs in suburban Melbourne 
back from place=town to place=suburb following 
(https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/2021-September/015042.html) 
this discussion. Metropolitan suburbs are more correctly tagged with the 
"suburb" tag, however without being listed as 'towns' they don't appear 
as a label until a greater zoom is used. You can see the difference in 
this image [1]: the south east is using "place=suburb", but the 
north/west hasn't yet been changed.

Suburbs and Localities in Australia are all using admin_level=10 [2], 
and some changes in early 2020 to the default map rendering 
(https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4016) 
significantly reduced the prominence of admin_level 9 and 10 tags. While 
some other countries do use levels 9 and 10 for "suburbs", most seem to 
use it for neighbourhoods, sub-divisions, etc. I feel as though this 
makes Australia's usage a bit of an outlier, as a 'suburb' has more 
prominence than a generic neighbourhood would. There are also a few 
entries in the existing admin_level structure that seem out of place?

I can see this was discussed in September 2020 
(https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/2020-September/013976.html). 
In that thread, the hierarchy of places was agreed to be generally 
Country>State>LGA>locality (town/suburb)>land parcel, but the 
implications for rendering weren't covered.

I would like to propose that we adjust the admin_level to better align 
with the general usage of suburb within the community, with the 
additional benefit of better rendering consistent with the boundary 
usage internally.

Current Usage

  		2
  		3
  		4
  		5
  		6
  		7
  		8
  		9
  		10

  		_Australia_
  		<none>
  		State/Territory Border
  		<none>
  		LGA Border
  		District or Region Border (e.g Greater Sydney, Greater Melbourne, 
etc.)
  		Australia Post Postode Border
  		Locality Border (ONLY where larger than ABS boundary)
  		Locality Border (suburbs or towns)

Proposed Usage

  		2
  		3
  		4
  		5
  		6
  		7
  		8
  		9
  		10

  		_Australia_
  		_<none>_
  		State/Territory Border
  		District or Region Border (e.g Greater Sydney, Greater Melbourne, 
etc.)
  		LGA Border
  		(none)
  		Locality Border (suburbs or towns)
  		(none)
  		(none)*

* Australia Post Borders would be changed from boundary=administrative 
to boundary=postal_code, or put here if appropriate.

Appreciate this is a big topic with lots of complexity. Would love to 
hear your thoughts.

Dian

Links:
------
[1] https://imgur.com/a/QcDMBjv
[2] 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dadministrative#10_admin_level_values_for_specific_countries
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