[OSM-talk-be] Fixing administrative borders

[Ben Laenen]

Kurt Roeckx wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 08, 2011 at 11:04:56AM +0200, Ben Laenen wrote:

> > country: level 2
> > regions: level 4
> > communities: level 5
> > provinces: level 6
> > arrondissements: level 7
> > municipalities: level 8
> > district/deelgemeentes/sections: level 9
> 
> This is atleast how it used to be, and what I've always used.
> 
> I have some comments about this.
> 
> I think we should not map level 5, because it's more about people
> than it is about land.  Brussels is part of both the Dutch and the
> French community, and last time I looked at it, it was also
> properly mapped like that.
> 
> Brussels is also special in that it doesn't belong to any
> province.  So it ends up with no level 6 and 2 level 5s,
> and a whole level 4 for itself.
> 
> But my biggest problem with level 5 is that it's not actually
> a sublevel of 4, if mapped it would make more sense to be at
> the same level as the regions.

But for obvious reasons, we can't do that.

> And maybe we should map the 4 language regions too, if you
> really want to go and map everything.

My main concern is to somehow discern the border of the German language area 
(after all, it's the only border not at level 4).

But then again, the German language area is the only a part of the province of 
Liege which would put those admin levels upside-down again. But does that 
matter that higher admin levels aren't simply subdivisions of lower admin 
levels? I personally don't think there's a problem with that.


> I also have a problem with level 7.  We have 3 tpes of
> arrondissements:
> - Administrative (43 of them)
> - Judicial (27 of them)
> - Voting (depends)

We're mapping the administrative arrondissements.

> I would also like to point out that the name of the tag implies
> administration levels, so if you would want to map the
> arrondissements, it should be the administrative level.  But
> I'm not sure adding them to the map adds any value when using
> the administrative level, as there isn't any real administration
> at that level.

Well, they're called "administrative arrondissements" for a reason, even 
though they don't have some kind of government. I agree that the reason to 
have arrondissements is disappearing (it used to be more important), but as 
long as they exist, there's no reason not to map them.


> When only considering to map administrative levels, it would also
> mean that you can't map any sub-municipalities at level 9 because
> they don't have any administration, at least most don't.  But I do
> think that mapping at level 9 where possible is useful.

Administrative does not mean that it should have a government. But the 
boundaries of deelgemeenten/sections are well defined, and even though only 
the deelgemeenten in Antwerp have real administrative value, we have to tag 
the other deelgemeenten with the same tags.


http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relations/Proposed/Region has a proposal to 
map regions differently, and has some examples we could use for the other 
arrondissements:


> Maybe some of those things shouldn't be mapped as an
> administrative, but could be on the map with some other tag.

> We have 3 types of arrondissements:
> - Judicial (27 of them)

boundary=legal

further divided into gerechtelijke kantons/cantons judiciaires

Also, several judicial arrondissements together form a gerechtelijk gebied 
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerechtelijk_gebied

> - Voting (depends)

boundary=electoral

further divided into kieskantons/cantons électoraux

And again, several electoral arrondissements are combined into "kieskringen"


Greetings
Ben