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

[Brad Neuhauser]

I'm sure there are exceptions (aren't there always) but in general city
wards are for electing political representatives for a certain area,
similar to county commissioners, state legislators, congressional
representatives, etc. I would definitely call them political boundaries, so
I'd say yes to boundary=political. Like other political boundaries, there
probably aren't any indications of them on the ground, and it's at least
possible (if not likely) in the US that they change after redistricting
every ten years.

Brad

On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 10:22 AM Brian M. Sperlongano <zelonewolf at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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