[Talk-GB] Looking for places to map?

[Peter Reed]

Steve,

It needn't be parishes. For population data it looks as though I can get
down to ward level with up-to-date numbers from ONS.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=13893

Looking at the ONS lists there are about 9,000 wards in England (and about
10,000 parishes). It's going to take a while to trace them all!

More importantly it seems to me that this will only work when the boundaries
are meaningful to the community at large. I used the term "settlement" in
that sense, as a loose catchall for any city, town, village, or suburb that
was meaningful. The Opencyclemap locations seem to take a similar approach,
and seemed like a good starting point.

As an example, from the ONS lists, in Medway the wards are:

Chatham Central
Cuxton and Halling
Gillingham North
Gillingham South
Hempstead and Wigmore
Lordswood and Capstone
Luton and Wayfield
Peninsula
Princes Park
Rainham Central
Rainham North
Rainham South
River
Rochester East
Rochester South and Horsted
Rochester West
Strood North
Strood Rural
Strood South
Twydall
Walderslade
Watling

I don't know the Medway area, so I'm not sure how these wards translate into
"settlements" - but my guess from the names is that Gillingham, Rainham,
Rochester and Strood are "settlements" that are subdivided into smaller
wards. Cuxton, Halling, Lordswood and so on look like smaller settlements
that have been combined into wards, and some of the others (Peninsula,
River) might not correspond to a settlement or suburb of a settlement that
people would recognise. That seems to be the kind of mix we have round here.


In other words, there isn't always a ward boundary that corresponds to a
recognisable settlement, but where there is a ward (or district council
boundary) that corresponds to a recognisable settlement I can use it to
classify the apparent level of coverage on the map. 

I don't think we want to start inventing our own system of boundaries, so
I'm not quite sure where that leaves us elsewhere.

At the moment the best I can suggest is to do what makes sense locally with
the boundaries that are available. On the next round of data crunching I'll
do my best to make use of all the admin boundaries in the map that I am able
to match up with population figures.