[Talk-us] Ward boundaries in the US admin_level scheme

[Brian M. Sperlongano]

I recently updated the documentation[1] for US admin_level for Rhode
Island.  In that table, it lists wards at admin_level=9 for Rhode Island
and several other states.  Based on that documentation, I added wards[2]
for the city of Newport.

In Rhode Island, these wards are used for electoral purposes in cities,
such that a member of the city council would represent a particular ward.
In at least one town, the same concept is called a "district" or "town
council district".  And, in yet other towns, the entire town elects the
entire town council (i.e. "pick 5 from this list of 15 candidates"), and in
those towns there are no such subdivisions.

Note that for cities with wards, there is no ward government.  It is
possible that there is some usage of the ward boundaries for providing city
services, but I have not explored this in any detail.

Is this concept of "ward" the same as what it means in other states?

When I lived in a RI city with wards, I was never aware of which ward I
lived in, there aren't signed or marked boundaries, and there are really
just a paper concept. I question whether wards actually belong in the
admin_level scheme or if they a different category of boundary such as
boundary=political.


[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_admin_level
[2] Example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/11582238
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