[Talk-us] Alaska CPD boundaries

Steven Johnson sejohnson8 at gmail.com
Tue Nov 27 15:22:12 GMT 2012


I don't know if it's helpful in this particular case, but there is a
diagram of the hierarchy of the Census geography here:

http://www.census.gov/geo/reference/hierarchy.html

-- SEJ
-- twitter: @geomantic
-- skype: sejohnson8

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." --
Einstein



On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Paul Norman <penorman at mac.com> wrote:

> > From: Greg Troxel [mailto:gdt at ir.bbn.com]
> > Sent: Monday, November 26, 2012 4:48 AM
> > Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Alaska CPD boundaries
> >
> >
> >   The census bureau divided the unorganized borough into 11 census
> > areas.
> >   These have no legal significance but serve to sub-divided the state
> > into
> >   convenient parts. In spite of this they are in many ways like
> > counties. I've
> >   tagged them the same as counties (admin_level=6) but I'm not convinced
> > that
> >   this is the best tagging.
> >
> > If they're just a census division, it seems wrong to call them boroughs
> > (treating them like counties with a different name).  Boroughs as
> > counties seem right - it's the way the state divides things less than a
> > state and more than a town.  The point of admin_level is government, and
> > census boundaries (for the sole convenience of the census bureau,
> > presumably) are not in any way governments.
>
> I must admit I've flipped back and forth on my views on this. I initially
> wasn't sure if they should be in but I've convinced myself that they should
> be and admin_level=6 is probably the best.
>
> In neither case are we tagging boroughs or CPDs as counties as counties.
> We're tagging them as admin_level=6 which is what counties in the other 49
> states are tagged as. admin_level=6 isn't automatically associated with
> counties.
>
> boundary=administrative is for administrative boundaries, not just
> government boundaries. Normally the government boundaries are the most
> meaningful ones but here there are no government boundaries. From a data
> consumer's perspective I think any analysis done is likely to treat the
> CPDs
> as equivalent to the boroughs. They have their own FIPS codes too.
>
> Now, if someone local were to come and say "the CPDs are meaningless and
> irrelevant" or "I say I'm from a CPD the same way someone would say they're
> from a borough" I'd be happy and we'd have a good answer but I don't
> believe
> anyone who's commented on the list is a local.
>
>
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