[OSM-talk-be] Boundary admin levels

[Ben Laenen]

On Thursday 29 May 2008, Kurt Roeckx wrote:
> > 5: communities (Flemish, French and German community)
>
> As far as I know communities are not based on were you live, just
> what language you speak.  It's based on the person, and not the place
> he lives.  I don't think you can map it, so I don't see a point.

Well, from what I know it's like this: communities are based on 
geographical boundaries where they have certain powers like education. 
These boundaries are defined by the language areas you refer to below. 
So we have:
* Flemish community = Flemish Region and Brussels-Capital Region
* French community = Walloon Region and Brussels-Capital Region minus 
the German-speaking Community
* German community

So, basically only in Brussels-Capital Region there's a "collision", 
i.e. both Flemish and French communities have powers there (i.e. French 
and Flemish schools over there).

But the thing is, people living in Brussels don't "choose" their 
community, you never sign a paper somewhere saying that you select 
Community X to be your choice. People living elsewhere in Belgium don't 
either.

Strictly speaking, people don't "belong" to communities, but people get 
services from them, and these communities have powers in well defined 
geographical areas. So, a French speaking person living in Liège could 
go to school in Hasselt for example (thus making use of a service of 
the Flemish community), and he could take extra education in Sankt Vith 
as well if he wants to at the same time. The only issue is that he'll 
have to go to the communities, since the Flemish community can't open a 
school in Liège for example.

Anyway, lots of talk just to say that the communities are geographically 
well defined and not based on the individual people, and thus make 
sense to map.



> On the other hand, there are 4 language communities, the Dutch, the
> French, the bilangual Brussels-Capital and the German, and each
> municipality belongs to one of them.

> > 9: deelgemeenten/sections de municipalité
>
> This can already be difficult to map properly.  When things got split
> (in 1976/1977?) some parts of the old village got changed to an other
> municipality.  But you can probaly figure something about based on
> the old and new borders for the municipalities.

The difficulty is just getting the boundaries from somewhere, but 
they're well defined. They're also really needed in Antwerp where the 
deelgemeenten have district status (yay, extra thing to vote on in 
elections :-) ).

> > 10: not used
> >
> >
> > For 10 we could maybe use the quarters of each municipality. I know
> > the city of Antwerp divides the districts into smaller quarters,
> > but I don't know if other municipalities do the same, so I haven't
> > filled that in yet.
>
> I think below 9 there can still be different levels, like hamlet and
> suburb, but I think we lack proper rules on when to use what.  And I
> think most of them don't really have clearly cut lines.

Quarters in Antwerp are well defined, see the street lists at 
http://www.antwerpen.be/eCache/ANT/23/746.html for the Antwerp district 
for example. But I don't know it for other places, I guess they're 
quite fuzzy in general...


> > I've put communities one step lower than regions (even though the
> > Flemish community is bigger than the Flemish Region, since it
> > includes Brussels Capital Region) so that may be a discussion
> > perhaps, but I generally see the communities being less important
> > than the regions.
>
> See my comment above.  It doesn't make sense, the Brussels Capital
> Region is not part of the Flemish community, but people from both
> the Dutch and French community live in the Brussels Capital
> Region.

As said above, Brussels-Capital Region belongs to both communities.

But if we take the language areas then, what names would you use for 
them then? AFAIK they don't have official names, since they're not 
official country divisions...

Greetings
Ben