[Talk-us] Pittsburgh neighborhood boundaries mapped with admin level 9?

[Albert Pundt]

Why are townships, boroughs, towns, and cities in PA mapped with separate
admin levels, or at least "supposed to be" mapped that way according to
that page? As far as I know they're always only ever one level below
county, and never overlap. i.e. you never have a town in the middle of some
other township. There are plenty of smaller towns and villages that are
unincorporated and just census-designated places, but these aren't
administrative divisions and are mapped with boundary=census. So why should
the various county subdivisions get differing admin levels? Plus, from what
I've seen they seem to only ever be admin_level=8 anyway.

On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 3:53 PM, OSM Volunteer stevea <
steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:

> OK, three topics shake out from this, two Pennsylvania, one Boston.  I'll
> try (and likely fail) to be brief:
>
> 1)  Pittsburgh's neighborhoods, now entered and tagged admin_level=9, seem
> like they are better entered as admin_level=10, to harmonize with
> neighborhoods in many other states.  Boundaries with value 9 are "something
> else," emerging as consensus (not necessarily fully entered into OSM,
> though they could be in, say, New Orleans) for a city with BOTH wards as 9
> AND neighborhoods as 10, since we need to preserve the hierarchy between
> the two.  I propose that the Pittsburgh neighborhood polygons be changed
> from 9 to 10 and that a "Neighborhood" entry at 10 be entered into
> Pennsylvania's row in US_admin_level wiki's "Big Table" (I could change
> them with a quick Overpass query-to-JOSM edit).  Yes?
>
> 2)  Pennsylvania's structure in the Big Table (the above notwithstanding)
> is now:
>
> Pennsylvania-4, County-6, with City-8 directly subordinate to County-6,
> Pennsylvania-4, County-6, Township-7, Village-8/Hamlet-8,
> Pennsylvania-4, County-6, Borough/Boro-7, Town-8.
>
> However, we'll need to add Neighborhood-10 (assuming the answer to 1)
> above IS "Yes") somewhere, at least to the City-8 sub-row as Pittsburgh is
> a City.  I doubt we need to add Neighborhood-10 to the Township-7,
> Village-8/Hamlet-8 sub-row, but I could be wrong.  What about the
> Borough/Boro-7, Town-8 sub-row?  Do THOSE have Neighborhood-10?  (I doubt
> it, but I could be wrong).  City, yes.  The others?  Let's leave those
> "N/A" for now.
>
> 3)
> > On Jul 27, 2017, at 11:02 AM, Bill Ricker <bill.n1vux at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Massachusetts looks correct in the small table to my eye in terms of
> legal entities, Wards and Precincts are primary fine-scale legal entities.
> I know my Ward and Precint numbers in Boston, so can confirm they exist.
> >
> > OTOH there are no "signs on the ground" for Wards or Precincts.
> >
> > As noted in Talk, there are also Council Districts but their mapping
> onto Wards/Precincts will *change* for re-gerrymandering after each census
> (which in Boston is an on-going process, we don't wait for Federal census
> to count noses!)  and could be easily abolished if we opted for all
> city-wide seats again.  Wards and Precinct boundaries are less flexible;
> deeds reference them; Precincts are  the fundamental unit that City, State
> House, State Senate, US House district gerrymanders are built from; but
> still even Ward&Precinct boundaries are adjusted periodically if a precinct
> suddenly is built up or industrialized.
> >
> > Neighborhoods are also formally defined by city planning dept in Boston.
>
> So, Bill, Massachusetts' entry in the Big Table is a bit of a hack, since
> we have:
> Massachusetts-4, County-6, Town-8, Precinct-9
> Massachusetts-4, County-6, City-8, Ward-9, Precinct-10
> but in Ward-9 we say "Boston has Districts and Wards."
>
> As you say you can confirm that Boston has Ward and Precinct (which we
> capture without Boston's exceptional mention), and (Council) Districts are
> "mapped onto Wards/Precincts," can you clarify whether the Big Table needs
> an entry for Boston for (Council) Districts?  Where would that go?  9?
> 10?  Are there other cities in Massachusetts which do this?  And as you say
> that Neighborhoods are also in Boston, where do those fit into Boston being
> 8, having 9 as Ward and Precinct as 10 (with perhaps Districts as a
> "different 9" and perhaps Neighborhoods as a "different 10")?  Or, perhaps
> because these are so changeable (with regular re-districting) we simply do
> not enter them, or enter them and perhaps leave them alone.  Whew!
>
> Regarding signs:  admin boundaries sometimes do have signs on the ground,
> often do not, especially for 9 and 10 entities.  OSM consensus seems to be
> OK with saying that an admin boundary not clearly being delineated "in real
> life" or being marked by signage everywhere "on the ground" is not really
> sufficient reason to suppress these important map objects from OSM's
> database.  While it may seem controversial, I believe a strong argument can
> be made that if we are defining and mapping admin_level=2, 4, 6 and 8,
> because we also define 10, we might as well map 10 where it really exists
> (often, big-city neighborhood councils are real things, with real
> boundaries).
>
> I know OSM may never get type=boundary, admin_level=* PERFECT, but I'll
> take "very good or excellent," as the US does seem to be getting there.
>
> Thanks,
> SteveA
> California
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