Hello,
I wanted to prompt a conversation about admin_level tagging in Australia
and whether the current levels are appropriate.
For context, I have been slowly changing suburbs in suburban Melbourne
back from place=town to place=suburb following
(https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/2021-September/015042.html)
this discussion. Metropolitan suburbs are more correctly tagged with the
"suburb" tag, however without being listed as 'towns' they don't appear
as a label until a greater zoom is used. You can see the difference in
this image [1]: the south east is using "place=suburb", but the
north/west hasn't yet been changed.
Suburbs and Localities in Australia are all using admin_level=10 [2],
and some changes in early 2020 to the default map rendering
(https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/4016)
significantly reduced the prominence of admin_level 9 and 10 tags. While
some other countries do use levels 9 and 10 for "suburbs", most seem to
use it for neighbourhoods, sub-divisions, etc. I feel as though this
makes Australia's usage a bit of an outlier, as a 'suburb' has more
prominence than a generic neighbourhood would. There are also a few
entries in the existing admin_level structure that seem out of place?
I can see this was discussed in September 2020
(https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/2020-September/013976.html).
In that thread, the hierarchy of places was agreed to be generally
Country>State>LGA>locality (town/suburb)>land parcel, but the
implications for rendering weren't covered.
I would like to propose that we adjust the admin_level to better align
with the general usage of suburb within the community, with the
additional benefit of better rendering consistent with the boundary
usage internally.
Current Usage
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
_Australia_
<none>
State/Territory Border
<none>
LGA Border
District or Region Border (e.g Greater Sydney, Greater Melbourne,
etc.)
Australia Post Postode Border
Locality Border (ONLY where larger than ABS boundary)
Locality Border (suburbs or towns)
Proposed Usage
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
_Australia_
_<none>_
State/Territory Border
District or Region Border (e.g Greater Sydney, Greater Melbourne,
etc.)
LGA Border
(none)
Locality Border (suburbs or towns)
(none)
(none)*
* Australia Post Borders would be changed from boundary=administrative
to boundary=postal_code, or put here if appropriate.
Appreciate this is a big topic with lots of complexity. Would love to
hear your thoughts.
Dian
Links:
------
[1] https://imgur.com/a/QcDMBjv
[2]
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dadministrative#10_admin_level_values_for_specific_countries_______________________________________________
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