[Talk-us] TIGER 2022 PLACE dataset

Thu Jan 19 00:55:53 UTC 2023

Oh man, sorry I’m late to party here. CDPs are one of my favorite topics!

First, from a DWG perspective (this paragraph only is me wearing the DWG
hat), all data produced by the United States Census Bureau is public domain
under United States law, and therefore is fully compatible with
OpenStreetMap. Now, should you import it as polygons willy-nilly? No.
Because most place data is already in the map and so to import it would
mean conflating with existing data. You may update existing places with the
latest census data, and overwrite boundaries that are there especially if
they are from the original 2008 import. I have done this for many of the
ones in Maryland. Whether you decide to conflate the boundaries with their
roadway or river centerline data, using a multipolygon is up to you. As
others have mentioned, these boundaries are not verifiable, and the census
uses existing geographic features to delineate places where there is not a
legal boundary, so I tend to reuse existing geometry in OSM, rather than
create a duplicative feature.

Now, my own perspective is that census designated places most certainly
have a place in OpenStreetMap, because of complex rules about what defines
a place in the United States. Some jurisdictions do not have any
incorporated town boundaries and yet people refer to their area as a town.
The CDP becomes the de facto boundary. One could argue that an incorporated
town does not have any verifiable boundary either, (in an OSM perspective)
as most town boundaries I’ve looked at are not painted on the ground, nor
are there signs at every route crossing. While, it’s true that town
boundaries may have a legal description, only United States federal
documents are automatically public domain so local town incorporation
documents may not be and often are not released in a public license. For
that matter, what defines a state boundary? The United States has a
standard geographic data set for state boundaries, but it can differ from
what the states consider their own boundaries to be due to things like
projections and surveying discrepancies.

My point is that just because the CDP is not verifiable on the ground it
does not mean that it should not be added to the map. Further, I think that
all boundaries in OpenStreetMap transcend the rule about verifiability as
there are many examples of boundaries between nation states that are not
well defined nor are they agreed-upon, and yet we have to come to some
semblance of an agreement about where those lines should be on our map.

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 7:39 PM MoiraPrime via Talk-us <
talk-us at openstreetmap.org> wrote:

> I will add my perspective here that in the past I've used TIGER PLACE data
> to upgrade boundaries in Mississippi and add missing ones as well. The
> original TIGER boundaries in OSM may be outdated, and they sometimes
> improve them over time, so carefully looking and comparing them is
> important.
>
> So I think if you're looking at a dataset and importing a TIGER PLACE
> boundary, and you're doing them one by one as needed, that would be fine.
>
> To add a specific example, a couple months ago I imported the TIGER/Line
> 2020 Place Shapefile for the city of Diamondhead, Mississippi (Relation:
> ‪Diamondhead‬ (‪110003‬) | OpenStreetMap
> <https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/110003>). This is a city that is
> fairly new. Previously it was simply a Census Designated Place, but about
> 10 years ago the people there officially put in the effort to get it
> established as a city government, and the City's boundary did not match
> what the original CDP boundary was. In this case it was an improvement to
> outdated data, and was personally checked by me and compared to the
> previous data.
> On 1/17/2023 10:01 AM, Bill Ricker wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 8:22 AM Aleksandar Matejevic (Hi-Tech Talents LLC)
> via Talk-us <talk-us at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>
>> I have a question regarding TIGER 2022 PLACE dataset (
>> https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2022/PLACE/).
>> Is it OK with the community to add these polygons to the OSM?
>>
>
> Can you point to the description of what these PLACE polygons represent
> and what meta-data comes with each polygon?
>
> What are they in OSM terms? Are they Admin boundaries?
>
> (Do we even consider US Census CDP, Census Designated Place, a mappable
> entity?)
>
> I saw there were some imports of the previous datasets in the past years,
>> but lot of polygons are still missing,
>>
>
> Can you provide (an) example(s) of what's missing from OSM but in TIGER
> 2022 PLACE that would be beneficial in OSM?
>
> and license looks to be compatible with the OSM one.
>>
>
> I expect so from history, but for the record of the conversation, it would
> be good to link and quote it here.
>
>> I am not talking about mass import of the data,
>>
>
> Ok good , that's a very different discussion.
>
>> but using polygons and adding them one by one if they are not already
>> added and improving geometries of the existing ones.
>> What is the opinion on this effort?
>>
>
> Using individual polygons of compatible license to improve existing
> polygons or to start a missing but useful polygon of a sort we are trying
> to curate seems (almost*) unobjectionable.
>
> *Provided that there isn't a better source of compatible license easily
> available for the polygon in question.
> (E.g. if a specialist agency has lakes, forests that are more refined than
> Census's, we'd prefer theirs.
> US Census studies settlements for purposes of the enumeration -
> notoriously did not record One Way direction as Enumerators walk their
> blocks in cities - not uninhabited wildlands, so will likely have fewer
> points in a polygon that indicates "no one lives here", while having
> excellent polygons for "this is an incorporated place, inhabitant count
> rolls-up to entity # NNNNN named YOUR PLACENAME HERE† at level LL" (we use
> these as Admin boundaries?) and "this is an unincorporated place and the
> census definition is this" (maybe we don't, as there's no Now Entering CDP
> imaginary boundary signage?).)
>
> (OTOH if the better source is not easily available - or will require a
> high level negotiation to get a compatible license statement from their
> agency management!  - starting with the CENSUS polygon makes sense, even if
> it's coarser than we'd ideally prefer.)
>
> † "Your State's Name Here <https://youtu.be/96Wtcpje0uE>" - Lou & Peter
> Berryman - A Generic Folk-Song praising whatever state they're visiting and
> performing in today.
>
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-- 
Sent from iPhone; kindly excuse tyops.
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