[Talk-GB] Metropolitan counties and other boundaries

[Colin Smale]

Hi Robert, 

On 2014-02-20 20:17, Robert Whittaker (OSM lists) wrote: 

> On 20 February 2014 11:34, Colin Smale <colin.smale at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> 
>> one thing I noticed is that there are two schools of thought regarding Metropolitan Districts. These are a subdivision of Metropolitan Counties, of which there are six: Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire.
> 
>> I would like to normalise this tagging, and looking at the current usage above and the wiki[1], propose that the Metropolitan Counties become boundary=ceremonial, and the Metropolitan Districts become boundary=administrative, admin_level=8.
> 
> If the "Metropolitan Districts" have essentially the same
> administrative powers/functions as a unitary authority, then I think
> they should be tagged with the same admin_level (i.e. 6) to reflect
> that fact. We'd then be consistently using admin_level=6 for the
> highest tier of local government. If they are slighty different (i.e.
> some powers rest elsewhere) then maybe we could consider using
> admin_level=7 instead. As far as I can tell, they're definitely not
> similar to the district councils under a normal county council, so iI
> think it would be better to avoid using admin_level=8.

Sounds reasonable to me. They are missing various powers of a true UA,
which are organised at a "Metropolitan County" level in "joint boards".
So admin_level=7 would reflect that intermediate level. 

> Ceremonial counties are a completely separate division of the country into Lord Lieutenancy areas -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_counties_of_England [1] . So in OSM I'd expect to find these in existence over the whole country, not just for the Metropolitan Counties. Since they have no administrative local-government function, I wouldn't expect them to need or have an admin_level tag. Sometimes they'll be coterminous with a normal county (i.e. the area controlled by a County Council). In which case, I'd expect to see two different relations in OSM, one for each entity.

That is how lieutenancies/ceremonial counties are currently tagged -
boundary=ceremonial, no admin_level. Indeed, if coterminous with an
administrative county, then two relations are needed. I believe many
already exist like this. See:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/English_Counties (which I have tried
to keep up-to-date) for an overview. It looks like there are still a few
missing - I will work on that. 

> To further complicate things, it seems that in a relatively recent development, there is now a "Greater Manchester Statutory City Region" with a "Greater Manchester Combined Authority" that does have some significant administrative functions. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Manchester_Statutory_City_Region [2] . This region is coterminous with the Greater Manchester Ceremonial County, but is a different entity. As above, I'd expect the two identical boundaries to have separate OSM relations. One with boundary=ceremonial and no admin_level tag, and the other with boundary=administrative and an appropriate admin_level. The admin_level value needs to be greater than 5 (English Regions) and less than the value we've used for the individual borough/city areas. So presumably we wouldn't be able to use admin_level=6 for the "Metropolitan Districts" within Greater Manchester, so 6 can be used by the "Combined Authority".

Hmm, I didn't realise that... Wikipedia suggests it may be modelled on
the Greater London Authority, which limited, well-defined powers. There
doesn't seem to be a relation for the GLA - but there is one (65606) at
admin_level=6 called "London". 

> Whether we should use 7 rather than 8 for the "Metropolitan Districts" would, I think, depend on how much their powers/responsibility are similar to a normal districts within a normal county, and how much they retain more of the character of a Unitary Authority or other "Metropolitan Districts". Robert.

 Colin 

Links:
------
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_counties_of_England
[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Manchester_Statutory_City_Region
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