[talk-au] Classifying settlements (Was Re: Filling in blank space (Was Re: Tagging towns by relative importance, not just population size))

[cleary]

Thanks Andrew. You are clearly well-informed on the availability and use of ABS data.  

Population size correlates fairly closely with the range and level of services that are available in a place. I support using population data to determine city/town/village/hamlet classification. 




On Fri, 6 Oct 2023, at 6:20 AM, Andrew Davidson wrote:
> On 5/10/23 18:01, cleary wrote:
>> the small central district? Or is it the much larger Tamworth LGA? I
>> think it would include the suburbs but not the outlying
>> towns/villages in the LGA. There are also city/suburbs such as "City
>> of Ryde" which is the name of a local government area in the Sydney
>> metropolitan area but the actuality is that, for all practical
>> purposes, Ryde is a suburb of Sydney.
>
> The ABS has population stats at different geographical levels. For 
> Tamworth we have LGA:
>
> Tamworth Regional: 63,070
>
> This would be the population you would put on the admin_level 6 
> boundary. From the suburb and localities you get:
>
> Tamworth: 189
>
> This would be the population that would go on the admin_level 9 
> boundary. From the urban centres and localities you get:
>
> Tamworth: 35,415
>
> This is the population of the settlement, which I have been adding to 
> the place node. The UCL is the ABS's attempt to answer the question 
> "what is the population of ....?"
>
>> 
>> Leaving aside cities and suburbs, our discussion has mainly been
>> about non-city rural areas. While  there may be some fuzziness around
>> the population of the business and residential districts of a
>> settlement and whether the population in its surrounding areas should
>> be counted, I would support population numbers as a reasonably
>> objective and useful determinant of town/village/hamlet status.
>
> How to subdivide an urban settlement into subdivisions is another set of 
> problems.
>
> I would prefer a system based on just population, but I got the feeling 
> that we wouldn't get agreement on that, as we have mappers who want to 
> adjust.