Thoughts about Sydney and Parramatta as Suburbs in OSM

README.md

Current Tagging

As far as I can tell "Sydney" refers to

1. Sydney the Suburb (aka CBD, the City, when your postal address includes the word "Sydney")

a) as an area https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/5729534

• admin_level=10
• boundary=administrative
• place=suburb
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Sydney%20central%20business%20district

b) as a label node https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3884437213

• place=suburb

2. City of Sydney the Local Government Area

a) as an area https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1251066

• admin_level=6 (LGA admin_level)
• boundary=administrative
• place=municipality
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:City%20of%20Sydney

3. Sydney the capital city of NSW

a) as an area https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/5750005

• admin_level=7 (district or region admin_level, eg Sydney, Illawarra, Hunter Valley)
• boundary=administrative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Sydney

b) as a label node https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/13766899

• admin_level=4 (this is for the capital tag, meaning it's the capital of the state)
• place=city
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Sydney

I think this is good, we have the Sydney suburb and then the city.

For Parramatta we have:

1. Parramatta the suburb (where Parramatta is listed as your postal address) a) as an area https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/5634771

• admin_level=10
• boundary=administrative
• place=suburb
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Parramatta

b) as a label node https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/19160869

• place=suburb
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Parramatta?uselang=en-AU

2. Parramatta the LGA

Admin level

The admin_level tag https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:admin_level "describes the administrative level of an object within a government hierarchy". So in that sense Parramatta and Harris Park are both at the same admin_level of 10 (suburb or locality in Australia)

Place Tag

On the other hand, I think that urban centres aren't equal. Just compare Parramatta to Harris Park, Hornsby to Asquith. I think it might be the population tag? But either way the current mapping seems to get it right see https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=11/-33.8168/151.1643, the only names shown are the more important ones like Parramatta, Liverpool, Blacktown, Hornsby, Castle Hill, Chatswood, Sutherland, Penrith until you zoom in.