I have an interesting question regarding a section of town in Bee Cave, TX, that I’m not sure how to handle.
Lake Pointe, according to Google, is a section (I don’t know the technical term for this - borough?) of town within Bee Cave, Texas, where these streets reside.
Looking at the administrative boundary for Bee Cave, it falls outside the northeastern border. According to the map (again, in Google), this isn’t Austin but does reside in Bee Cave.
Any thoughts on the best way to handle this so that the streets are added in?
If there’s a verifiable/official source of truth which states that the city border is different than what’s currently mapped in OSM, then it can be corrected. Google is not one of these sources.
OpenStreetMap editors are very particular about data sources, both from the perspective of correctness as well as licensing. This is a scenario of OSM editing where I’d advise against direct edits and instead towards conversational involvement (via their forum, Slack group, or Discord channel) where you raise your concern & provide correct boundary/source & request assistance.
It’s a more tedious process than just moving the boundary around, but by involving the OSM community it will be much more likely to stick around as a permanent change.
Ok - I’ll engage there (OSM). I wasn’t assuming that Google was authoritative - but wanted to use it as reference to explain the situation as I had no idea how to consider areas of town in “no mans land” …
Looking at the city of Bee Cave’s planning department’s maps, specifically the city limits map (link to PDF), it seems that the area in question is not within Bee Cave city limits. The boundary in OSM differs from the boundary in the PDF I linked to above, but Bee Cave seems to be a growing city intent on annexing surrounding land, so it’s no surprise maps will be out-of-date quickly.
Lake Pointe, according to Google, is a section (I don’t know the technical term for this - borough?) of town within Bee Cave, Texas, where these streets reside.
The map of Bee Cave city limits shows that Lake Pointe is within Bee Cave’s extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ; link to advocacy group), which allows municipalities to exert control over unincorporated areas adjacent to city limits without providing them a voice in government^.
In short, Lake Pointe is not within Bee Cave’s city limits but is partially under its jurisdiction. The boundaries in OSM are correct to exclude Lake Pointe.
^ I’m an urban planner in another state and I have to say I’m shocked such a thing exists, especially in Texas.
That’s pretty fascinating. I travel down here for business so definitely not familiar with the concept. As you said, it’s hard to believe that a section of town (especially so close to Austin) could be governed by said town without any real voting rights. Crazy!
I’m guessing, until Lake Pointe is formally adopted by Bee Cave, it’ll exist outside the confines of City Strides?
Until and if that happens, yes, but first the city limits for Bee Cave will have to be edited in OSM. All of CityStrides’s data comes from OSM. I don’t know how often the limits of each geography is updated in CityStrides.
Jason Bosslett - CityStrides :link :
is good/accurate?
…