It seems to me that the presence and types of services correlate reasonably
closely with population, which is a verifiable number.
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) statistical boundaries approximate but
are not exactly the same as state government suburb/locality boundaries but are
close enough. Prior to gaining permission to use administrative boundaries
data, OSM was using ABS boundaries as the best available data. I am presuming
we still have permission to use ABS data.
I can think of issues about cities and suburbs such as whether one counts
Sydney locality ("suburb boundary") which is just the central city area while
the City of Sydney LGA is larger again and the Sydney metro area is much
larger. There would be similar issues in other cities. Does Tamworth's
population include its suburbs or just the small central district? Or is it the
much larger Tamworth LGA? I think it would include the suburbs but not the
outlying towns/villages in the LGA. There are also city/suburbs such as "City
of Ryde" which is the name of a local government area in the Sydney
metropolitan area but the actuality is that, for all practical purposes, Ryde
is a suburb of Sydney.
Leaving aside cities and suburbs, our discussion has mainly been about non-city
rural areas. While there may be some fuzziness around the population of the
business and residential districts of a settlement and whether the population
in its surrounding areas should be counted, I would support population numbers
as a reasonably objective and useful determinant of town/village/hamlet status.
I will be pleased to have a consistent approach to classifying settlements,
whatever is agreed,
On Thu, 5 Oct 2023, at 4:05 PM, Andrew Davidson wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 5, 2023 at 3:50 PM David Bannon <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I'd wonder if we are building an impossible to manage rule set. For example,
>> many small town doctor's clinic only have a doctor there one or two days a
>> week. So, a full time doctor is worth 40 points, so, a one day a week one is
>> 8 points ? Many, many "towns" have a community hall (or even a Mechanic's
>> Institute) but very many of them have fallen into such disrepair its unsafe
>> to go in. And a Hospital, thats one with an Emergency
>
> Yeap, exactly. That's why I was suggesting only four classes of
> services and only their presence or not. That way you can check them
> with an Overpass query.
>
> If it's all too hard, then the obvious solution is to just make the
> definition of a village a settlement with a population greater than
> 200 and less than 1000.
>
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