Re: [talk-au] place equals what BY features

[cleary]

 
I think using services is more useful.  The classification "city" is a
problem as it has multiple meanings (it can mean the inner city central
business district or it can mean the larger city local government area
or it can mean the very much larger area of surrounding communities) but
other classifications can be straightforward.  In my travels (more
extensive in NSW and Queensland than elsewhere), I have found local
government areas to be a helpful guide to thinking about places and
services. Towns generally provide services for people within their own
local government area while cities provide services for people from
greater distances including other local government areas.
 
 
My preliminary thinking is
 
 
Location : named place without residents.
 
 
Hamlet : place in which people reside but it does not necessarily
provide any services to residents. Residents may be in a concentrated
area or dispersed over a wider rural area.
 
 
Village : provides minimal services such as convenience store, fuel,
hotel, primary school or multiple of these ... but not necessarily all
of these. A village usually doesn't have a doctor but may provide some
outpatient health services and/or an emergency ambulance to take people
to a town for medical treatment but is unlikely to have in-patient
health care.
 
 
Town : provides services not only for immediate residents but also for
surrounding places, usually within the same local government area.
Services might include health service/hospital, secondary school,
specialty shops such as clothing store, hardware store, electrical
store, major national or intenational fast-food store, local government
offices, library ... most but not necessarily all of these. Just one of
these is probably not enough to make a town - needs a few or even most
of these. The presence of a high school (or combined primary/secondary)
is a very good single indicator as this is a service for a significant
surrounding area and cannot be sustained in smaller centres.  A hospital
providing in-patient care is another good indicator.
 
 
City :  provides even more and higher level services and is a major
centre for surrounding areas. The high level of services will attract
people from surrounding local government areas.
 
Smaller cities are generally contained within their own local government
areas but may provide services for residents from surrounding local
government areas. The city central business district (CBD) can be
classified as a "city" while surrounding areas within the same local
government area are "suburbs" although it is a matter for the local
government body to decide whether to subdivide into suburbs. For
example, in NSW, the rural cities of Wagga Wagga and Griffith have
central CBDs and the surrounding areas within the city local government
area are officially classified as suburbs. In contrast, the whole of the
Dubbo residential area is part of Dubbo and there neighbourhoods but no
official suburbs. It would still be a city even though it has no offical
suburbs. I think a key indicator is that cities usually provide services
for people from surrounding local government areas as well as local
residents. Services in cities are similar to towns but on a larger scale
and higher level. For example the court house would house sittings of
the District Court, education probably extends to a university campus,
health and hospital services include specialist/referral services. A
town might have a small number of professionals such as
solicitors/doctors etc but a city would have more. A city has many more
shops and offices than a town.
 
 
Then there are the larger cities such as capital cities - they can have
cities within cities. There is central Sydney city (the CBD), then there
is the City of Sydney local government area, but then there is the vast
area commonly known as "greater Sydney"  leading to some confusion
when deciding what constitutes a city.  Within "greater Sydney" there
are smaller cities with their own satellite suburbs. Parramatta,
Blacktown, and Penrith are such smaller cities within greater Sydney.
Then there is Chatswood ... the local government area is known as
"Willoughby City Council" but Chatswood is the actual city CBD (I
haven't though this through but I think Chatswood is the city location
in this case as that is the place where the main services are - the name
of the local government body is less relevant.) Then there can be "in-
between" cities. Newcastle in NSW is not the state capital but it rivals
smaller state/territory capitals in size and services. It has other
local goverment areas within the "greater Newcastle" area making it more
like a larger city than a smaller one.
 
I have no difficulty in naming Sydney, Chatswood, Penrith, Blacktown,
Parramatta, Wagga Wagga, Griffith, Dubbo and Newcastle as cities and the
same would apply to places elsewhere in Australia providing similar
levels of services to residents of their own and surrounding local

Re: [talk-au] place equals what BY features

[Warin]

On 5/13/2016 9:22 PM, cleary wrote:
I agree that there is a need to improve our classification of places. 
However I think that taking population as the sole criterion will 
create more discrepancies than we have already.


I think of it as a guide. In fact most of the OSM wiki to me is a guide.

For example, I live in a Sydney suburb that has a population greater 
than the gazetted "state suburb" of Sydney (roughly the CBD area). If 
we adopted a strictly population-based criterion, my suburb and many 
others with more than 10,000 people would be "towns" in OSM and Sydney 
CBD be a "town". My suburb has about the same population as the rural 
city of Griffith, NSW. I think Griffith is a city but my suburb is not.
Yep. I take your point. Closer to home is Penrith .. a city or a suburb 
of Sydney?
I won't keep going on and on, but there are many questions thrown up 
by relying on population alone as the criterion for determining if a 
place is a city or town or whatever. I think it has to be a sort of 
"common sense" decision taking population into account but other 
factors as well.  But I do support the need to try to clarify our 
classifications and appreciate the difficulty in resolving the issue.

A start on the classification by features? Warning .. draft only!

A city at a minimum has;

one hospital with emergency services
more than one police station
more than one public library
more than one secondary school
a university
more than one doctor's practice
more than one petrol station
more than one bank
more than one ATM
more than one Post Office

A town at a minimum has;

a hospital
a police station
a public library
a secondary school
a doctor's practice
a newsagent
a petrol station
a bank
a Post Office

A village at a minimum has;

a convenience store



On Fri, May 13, 2016, at 07:11 PM, Warin wrote:

On 5/13/2016 11:36 AM, Warin wrote:

On 5/6/2016 9:51 AM, Simon Slater wrote:

On Thu, 5 May 2016 10:10:35 AM Ian Sergeant wrote:


1. Any attempt to make something render on sparse parts of the map, is
a rendering issue.  Any renderer is free to pre-process the data based
on a population and remoteness algorithm if they wish.

2. Personally, I make anything a town if it has services.  If it has a
pub, a take-away, a supermarket, a post-office, and a fuel station,
then it's a town.  I save hamlet for a population grouping without any
services, and a locality for a place where there is essentially no
population clustering.  This is a natural skew towards remoter
destinations becoming towns, because they are service towns for
surrounding areas, rather than necessarily having large populations
themselves.


Post offices may be a good guide.  25 years ago there were at least 4 post 
offices
between here (Swan Hill) and Kerang.  Now there is only one at Lake Boga, but
all the other post codes are still in place, mail routing through either
Kerang or Swan Hill.

Australia post has;

 *
Post Office (PO) and
 *
Local Post Office (LPO)

The LPO is usually smaller and within another business ..usually a local 
convenience store.

The ABS has this

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/1d90c1ef4ac928d5ca2570ec0018e4f7!OpenDocument 


"*Identifying towns*

In this review *small towns*have been defined as population centres with between 
1,000 and 19,999 people. Towns might ideally be distinguished from 
cities and from smaller rural communities according to functional 
criteria, such as the presence or absence of various educational, 
medical, recreational and retail services, together perhaps with 
administrative criteria such as whether or not a city or town 
council operated from within the town. While such conceptual 
distinctions might be made, it is difficult to put such definitions 
into practice. The above population size was therefore considered 
the most suitable alternative which would generally encompass these 
criteria."


I tend to concur with this - simplest to implement and verify. I do 
note the 'medical' services that ABS have for identifying towns etc, 
that may be a usefull criteria in addition to number of pubs, petrol 
stations etc.




I have gotten some 1,400 'towns from the OSM data base .. many of these have no 
population given, but from those that do;
Penrith 178465
Bunbury 64385
Maitland61431
Palmerston  46618
Melton  45624
Port Macquarie  41723
Sunbury 33062
Pakenham32911
Nowra   32556
Albany  30656
Devonport   29051
Goulburn21484
Busselton   21407
Ocean Grove 16093
Bacchus Marsh   14913
Port Hedland13772
Torquay 13339
Coolum Beach13154
Broome  12766
Batemans Bay12000
Lara11192
Drysdale10927

Compare this to the 'cities';
  
Charters Towers	8,234

Charleville 4,700
Caloundra