Chillagoe sounds like a village. It’s “only” 205 km (127 mi) W of the city of Cairns
Does it have a secondary school, eg for 14 to 18 year olds? The only town-level service is the “hospital”, but does it really offer full services? > There are another half a dozen other small/er settlements within ~150k of Chillagoe for which it is "town". A town should usually serve more than a half dozen hamlets. That’s a “village.” > “literally hundreds of similar towns.” That’s probably too many towns for a country with as low a population at Australia. > “SW US” Americans in the rural West are used to driving for 2 to 3 hours to the nearest town, 200 to 300km away. We used to drive 150km to town once or twice a month. So most small settlements are losing their shops and businesses. On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 11:49 AM Graeme Fitzpatrick <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Thu, 24 Jan 2019 at 12:09, Warin <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 24/01/19 12:50, Joseph Eisenberg wrote: >> >> It’s not possible to have “town” level services with less than 1000 >> people. A town has a major market (retail area) serving the surrounding >> area, as well as basic educational, cultural and government facilities. >> >> That is the usual interpretation (& certainly matches the Western Europe > / US definition) but here is an example of what I'm talking about: > https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/-17.1494/144.5257 > > Chillagoe has a population, according to the 2016 census, of 251 people, > so it "should" only be a =hamlet. However, it has a school, police station, > general store, hardware store, post office, 2 pub's, 2 museums, hospital, > bitumen airfield &, as it's a tourist destination in it's own right, about > 6 caravan parks / camping grounds! > > Dimbulah is ~100k to the east & is a bit bigger, but doesn't have a > hospital, & only an unsealed airstrip. > > The next major town west is Normanton, which is ~700k away! > > There are another half a dozen other small/er settlements within ~150k of > Chillagoe for which it is "town". > >> In your area of the world I agree. You have a 'good' population density. >> In some places the nearest neighbour can be 400 km away. The population >> 'centre' may have much less than 1,000 people in the local residential area >> .. but may service 1,000s of square kilometres. >> Necessity makes this population centre very important for the few people >> living in that area. >> > > Yep! Have just started a discussion on the Australia list concerning this > very point, after taking to somebody who lives in this area, & who made the > comment that OSM is a bit useless, because when you open it, all you see is > a massive blankness :-( > > & this, by no means, is an isolated example - Australia would have > literally hundreds of similar towns. I would think the same would probably > apply in places like Canada, Alaska, SW US, South Africa & a number of > other civilised but empty countries? > > Thanks > > Graeme > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging >
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