[talk-ph] Revisiting the admin_level values for boundary=administrative

[Eugene Alvin Villar]

Hi

Right now, in the mapping conventions page (
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Philippines/Mapping_conventions)
we have the following:

2 - National Border (this is a worldwide convention, so there will be no
changing of this value's meaning)
4 - Regions
6 - Provinces
8 - Cities and municipalities
9 - Barangays and Districts of Manila

I'd like to re-open the discussion on a few points. It's better we put these
things down pat before adding more barangay borders.

*I. Boundaries of Regions*

Is it useful to *explicitly* indicate the boundaries for regions? If not,
then we can bump up the admin_level for provinces to 4. If anyone really
wants the regional boundaries, then only a small amount of post-processing
is needed given the provincial boundaries (well, except for that weird
business with Isabela City and Cotabato City). As an alternative, since the
sort-of convention in OSM is to use the even numbers primarily and reserve
the odd numbers for special cases, then maybe we can have regions as
admin_level=3 and provinces as admin_level=4. Caveat: while regions are
generally just groupings of local government units, ARMM *does* have a
regional government. (And Metro Manila, the region, is somewhat a federation
under the MMDA.)

Here's how we can view regions: normal regions are simply groupings of
provinces subject to the whim of the President (so that each executive
department can have regional offices for better rendering and localization
of services). ARMM is a *special* unique region having its own autonomous
government and each city and municipality AFAIK can independently choose to
be part of ARMM, not on a per province basis. This is why Isabela City is
under Basilan, but outside ARMM, even though the rest of Basilan is in ARMM.

*II. Hierarchy of Administrative Units*

Here is the *administrative* (i.e., congressional/judicial/police/etc.
districts are not included) hierarchy in the Philippines:

- Regions* (no government except for ARMM, and quasi-government for Metro
Manila)
- Provinces (has a government)
- Cities / municipalities (has a government)
- Districts** (no executive government; e.g., Malate in Manila and Jaro in
Iloilo City, but not Cubao, a vaguely-defined district, in Quezon City)
- Zones (no government; cities and municipalities with zones include Manila,
Pasay, Caloocan; zones are just defined groupings of barangays for
administrative convenience)
- Barangays (has a government)
- Sitios / puroks (no government; boundaries are not always defined so maybe
all sitios/puroks can just simply be place=*)

** Some districts might need to be delineated. For example, Quezon City is
divided into 4 districts (numbered 1-4) and while these correspond 1-is-to-1
with the congressional districts of Quezon City and would not normally fall
under boundary=administrative (maybe, boundary=legislative/congressional?),
each district has its own set of city councilors (which I think means that
each district can have its own set of ordinances, though I'm not sure about
the details). This makes these districts "administrative" in their own right
and might merit their own boundary=administrative tagging.

Which of these do we include and at what values of admin_level?

*III. Highly-urbanized Cities and Independent Component Cities*

How do we handle the case of Highly-urbanized Cities and Independent
Component Cities? boundary=administrative implies an administration
delineation of sorts (e.g., the area delineated by the boundaries of Rizal
province is under the jurisdiction of the Provincial Government of Rizal).
HUCs and ICCs are administratively independent of their provinces (save from
unusual exceptions depending on the City Charter, like Mandaue City
residents being able to vote for Cebu Provincial positions despite being an
HUC). For example, Cebu City is a HUC and so the Cebu Provincial Government
has no legal say over the territory of Cebu CIty (except for the limited
case of paying costs to Cebu City for "hosting" the Cebu Provincial
Capitol). (This has resulted in a lot of legal battle between Cebu City and
Cebu Province, like the dispute on who has jurisdiction over Osmena Circle
in Cebu City.)

(See this Wikipedia article section regarding independent cities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_of_the_Philippines#Independent_cities )


Eugene / seav

-- 
http://vaes9.codedgraphic.com
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