Are you planning to store multiple versions of these polygons, for zoom layers?

Generally you need a high res version (eg: coastline) when zoomed in (large 
scale) and a lower resolution version when zoomed out (you can't see & don't 
need the detail.

This may or may not have an impact on your eventual data model, but it is worth 
ensuring you take this into account during the data modeling process. You can 
have a model where each feature has multiple geometry columns associated with 
it in the one table, or an approach which has the geometries in separate 
tables, using ID's to link to the aspatial attributes. The former is a simpler, 
monolithic solution, the latter is more complex but allows more use of 
tablespaces & underlying Postgres optimisation. 

You may also find you need to carry out joins (identify relationships between 
types of polygon, eg: cities within counties within states within countries, 
and this may perform better with a denormalised structure with separate tables 
for different categories of polygon. 

One example you might look at is the OSM data model. Not quite what you are 
describing, but a robust & well tested model for global roads & related spatial 
data, which does not use Postgis at all. 

http://booki.flossmanuals.net/openstreetmap/_draft/_v/1.0/the-osm-data-model/

--- On Mon, 4/9/12, mkubenka <mkube...@gmail.com> wrote:

From: mkubenka <mkube...@gmail.com>
Subject: [postgis-users] How to design a database for continents, countries, 
regions, cities and POIs?
To: postgis-users@postgis.refractions.net
Date: Monday, April 9, 2012, 11:31 PM

I'm brand new to GIS programming and I am designing a GIS application. Target
is to create system with continents, countries, regions (including states,
sub-regions, provinces), cities and places in cities. Each of this elements
will contain some text information and related stuff. As database we are
going to use PostgreSQL with PostGIS.

My question is how to design database for this system? I was thinking of 2
tables polygons and points, but I'm not sure if it's good way of thinking.

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