Chiming in on this thread because I was asked for feedback.
I live in a town called Guisborough, which is a level 10 admin area on OSM. But in CityStrides, Guisborough is just one part of the much larger Redcar & Cleveland. This encompasses a few towns and villages although is mostly very rural.
I’m new to posting on the forum but not to reading it, so I’ve looked into this before. My understanding is that the level 6 Redcar & Cleveland area on OSM does NOT have full coverage if switched to level 10, in fact the main town of Redcar would be excluded. So, again as I understand it, this limits us to sticking with the current setup and trying to walk the entire borough (which is fine by me and my husband, we made peace with that a while ago).
I think the problem is that there is no one answer that works everywhere, even just in one country as small as England, because we don’t think in “cities” the same way the US does. We’re in Guisborough, the nearest cities are Newcastle to the North and York to the South, but we’re not anywhere close to either of those and certainly wouldn’t name them if asked where we’re from.
So it depends on the goals for the site. If it’s to align with where people consider themselves “from”, then in our region level 10 would have made a lot of sense if it was available since it’s closer to separating by the main towns. But in other places, level 10 leaves you with multiple suburbs of a larger town or actual city and the people living there would consider themselves from that town or city, not the suburb.
So if this is the goal, the only answer is case by case for each area which is probably just not viable.
Appreciate this probably wasn’t any help at all, but maybe there’s a nugget in there somewhere 