[Talk-us] admin level for US states

Brad Neuhauser brad.neuhauser at gmail.com
Thu Nov 27 17:49:51 UTC 2014


I can't speak to the other countries you mention, but Japan's prefectures
are the equivalent of US states, and both are admin_level 4. The
Japanese "states" (doshusei) listed for admin_level 3 on the wiki page seem
to be some sort of experiment in regional administration. More info in
English here:
http://www.mutantfrog.com/2010/12/03/the-new-kansai-regional-league/

On Wednesday, November 26, 2014, Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> 2014-11-25 10:59 GMT+01:00 Sarah Hoffmann <lonvia at denofr.de>:
>
>> admin_levels have been invented "in order that different borders can be
>> rendered consistently among countries" according to the wiki[1].
>>
>
>
> +1, that's also what I am after.
>
>
>
>> That's
>> also what I remember. "State eqivalent" doesn't mean that they must be
>> organised exactly in the same way but that they are roughly at the same
>> level of administrative hierarchies.
>>
>
>
> +1
> my point was, that they aren't. Italian regions aren't roughly at the same
> level of administrative hierarchy than are the US States, and I guess also
> the French regions aren't.
> Japan does have states on admin level 3.
>
>
>
>> Under that definition US states are
>> the same as German bundesländer, French regions, Canadian provinces etc.
>> even though their political influence and internal organzisation is
>> wildly different.
>>
>
>
> how could you compare hierarchical levels if the organization is wildly
> different?
>
>
>
>>
>> There is a lot of software around that works under the assumption that
>> US states (and the equivalents in other countries) can be found at
>> admin_level=4.
>>
>
>
> and this would break if level 3 was used?
>
>
>
>> The current admin level hierarchy is not perfect but
>> it works for most practical applications.
>>
>
>
> actually it seems that changing the rendering to administrative polygons
> rather than using place nodes will create/reveal some inconsistencies and I
> was trying to fix this / find a solution. Maybe you are right and the
> solution is not in modifying the US state admin level but changing
> elsewhere. It simply seemed kind of an inconsistency to have the US state
> at the same level as German Länder and French Region, but maybe that was a
> misinterpretation of the admin levels.
>
> cheers,
> Martin
>
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