Hey all,
Runner from Sydney, Australia here!
Wondering if there’s way to see percentages/leaderboard for Sydney as a whole city rather than only for its individual suburbs (which are listed as cities on CityStrides)?
Thanks! 
Nathan
Would “The Council of the City of Sydney” be what you were looking for? It covers the Sydney LGA.
Actually ”Council of the city of Sydney”
That LGA is only a small part of Sydney towards its centre. I was hoping to see progress somewhere for Greater Sydney as a whole.
I’m assuming this is the area @nathan.moas is looking for: Relation: Sydney (5750005) | OpenStreetMap
Although the way CityStrides has it broken down by LGA (30 or so) with their suburbs nested as cities (300+, example) makes the most sense as a way to reasonably track progression.
Hey Sal, yeah that’s the one! I agree, although I’m really interested in having an overall progression/leaderboard as that’s the one I care about more than any individual LGA.
I recently added Sydney. It’s huge and I almost kind of sort of regret adding it. There was a pile of data to process, which took a while. It also caused some people to drop a bit in their global standings, because those ignore nested cities.
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For me I’m not checking global standings so can’t comment on that but I am pumped that working away at Sydney can now be seen in overall Sydney progress. Canberra, ACT would be (not quite as) large and unwieldly too but would be fun to see progress against other Canberrans. So Sydneysiders will have fun with that.
I’m a newbie to CityStrides and I love the whole idea and the execution.
Living in Sydney (Australia), I like the fact that there are three levels of city - the whole metropolitan area, the Local Government Areas and the individual suburbs. Gives me lots of ways to set different targets.
It had piqued my curiosity why the total number of streets I have completed (immediately under my name/icon) was slightly larger than the number I had completed in Sydney (the metropolitan area). I haven’t been out of Sydney since I signed up, so it isn’t streets from other regions.
I stumbled across the answer (while not really looking for it). I’m not sure if it is deliberate or an oversight, but there are around a dozen Local Government Areas (‘LGAs’) (akin to boroughs) that aren’t nested within the larger metropolitan area. The individual suburbs within those LGAs are nested in metropolitan Sydney. It means that if I complete a street in one of those LGAs it counts twice towards my overall total (assuming it is a unique street name) because those affected LGAs are treated as “top level” cities along with metropolitan Sydney, and the completed street is in both.
The effect on my personal total street count is thus far small because I’ve only wandered into a couple of the non-nested LGAs.
I have no idea what is involved in “fixing” this, and can understand if there is no appetite to do so. But I thought I’d flag it. Apologies if it has already been raised and dismissed elsewhere.
I can see a complication in that some (most) of the non-nested LGAs are wholly and unequivocally part of the way the Sydney has been created (eg Randwick, Waverley) but a couple of the LGAs on the outer-bounds of Sydney are part-in/part out of the way Sydney has been defined. For example, there is a tiny part of Wollondilly Shire Council that has been included within Sydney but most sits outside. Generally Wollondilly would be considered to be outside Metropolitan Sydney (but part of Greater Sydney, along with large areas that haven’t been included in the Sydney).
I realise that some of these geographic areas aren’t well defined - often our politicians stumble over what is “Greater Sydney”, what is “Metropolitan Sydney” etc, though the LGA boundaries do provide a reasonably logical way of defining each area. Metropolitan Sydney seems to be a close (though not exact) approximation of how Sydney has been created in CityStrides.
I can provide a list of all those non-nested LGAs if there is any appetite to fix - divided into those where there are no boundary issues and those that might be harder because they mess with how Sydney has been defined here.
However, as per my earlier comments, I completely understand if this fits into the too hard / more bother than it’s worth bucket.
Edit: I noticed on other discussions people providing links to cities or streets that were problematic. I’m not sure exactly how to do this, but below I’ve tried to provide a link to one of the LGAs that should be nested within Sydney but isn’t.
Can easily provide a link to the others (around six) that are wholly contained within Sydney as defined on CityStrides (and thus don’t require fiddling with the very definition of Sydney to nest). But will hold off until I understand if this is an easy fix and/or if there is any appetite for it.
Thank you Liz for your post. I have a little more to add which hopefully will help understand the issue.
I also live in Sydney and seen the double counting problem. I have been trying to understand the problem for a little while and this is my best guess looking at some of my runs.
The Sydney area (admin_level 7 in open street maps), shows with the CityMap toggle button “on” in the LifeMap. CityMap toggle button also shows all municipalities (admin_level 6 in open street maps) within Sydney which border the edge of Sydney but not the ones totally contained inside. For examples, Randwick City Council, Northern Beaches Council and Penrith City Council shows but Inner West and Parramatta do not show.
Compare this to Melbourne which has all councils showing with CityMap toggle button “on”
Running any of the edge bordering councils like Randwick and completing all the one street of the same name, two streets are credited to your total rather than one.
Conversely, running a street, for example, in the Inner West (which is does not show as a boundary in the “CityMap”), it counts as one when all streets of the same name within Sydney (admin_level 7) are completed. As the Sydney area is big, around 100 by 100 kms, there can be many streets with the same name. For example there are more than 30 John Streets in Sydney. I gather all 30 plus streets need to be completed to get the “street” added to the tally.
It would be nice if the street tally was closer to the real tally. I understand it would be it would be very hard to make it 100% accurate but if it could be closer that would be great.
Some interesting observations Johnny. I confess I hadn’t twigged that all the un-nested LGAs were on the boundaries of Sydney - as I hadn’t thought of the Pacific Ocean as a boundary. But I guess it is. I also had Penrith LGA marked on my listed as one that was nested, but going back to look again I see it isn’t. I think I must have clicked on the suburb of Penrith originally and seen that was nested, rather than the relevant Penrith City Council.
I haven’t wandered into OpenStreetMaps yet. Or rather, I’ve opened it and retreated in haste.
Re your observation on Melbourne, I don’t think there is an equivalent of the big Sydney set up as a city within CityStrides. I read some comments from James, dating from a couple of years back, that he had to create the big Sydney in some way. I thus far have no idea what information was available / was used to create this top level city. But within Melbourne, the top level cities seem to be the council areas. So all a CityStrider has to do is complete all the streets with the same name within a council area and they will get credited with a completed street.
I actually don’t mind the extra challenge posed by big Sydney in building up my total street count. It just means that I won’t be extending a challenge to my friend in Perth to see who can complete the most streets next year - in Perth it seems that the top level cities are suburbs, not even councils/LGAs.
As a recent newcomer to CityStrides, and with so much of my map devoid of purple, I have started to think of different ways to set challenges for the upcoming year. Like thinking of all the streets I have lived on and fully completing those streets. Or looking for streets including my name. Unfortunately, there are a lot of Elizabeth Streets scattered throughout Sydney so I doubt that’s achievable in 2024!
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Just getting around to reviewing this again 
I’ve really made a mess of the Sydney area! Yikes.
-
I have this as Sydney: Sydney, New South Wales - CityStrides
This is huge … Did I mistakenly bring in a county/region/something? Is Council of the City of Sydney, New South Wales - CityStrides the “correct” city of Sydney?
I suspect that Sydney, New South Wales - CityStrides is correct, but I’d like to confirm. -
I have several different levels of cities within Sydney as nested cities. I need to fix this by choosing one level as the collection of nested cities within Sydney … I’m unsure whether to choose admin level 6 or 9.
- example of 6: Penrith City Council, New South Wales - CityStrides
- example of 9: Leonay, New South Wales - CityStrides
There’s not a single (or simple answer) to your first question. I started writing something but it was turning into a thesis so I will spare you that (for now). My opinion (as just one Sydney walker - and still a newbie at that) is no, you haven’t made a mistake in trying to create a Big Sydney. I would be sad to lose it, even if my chances of ever completing it are non-existent. (I note that the current leader in Sydney has recently cracked the 13% threshold.)
In size (distance from one side to another, as well as in km of streets to walk) the Sydney CS has defined is of the same order of magnitude as Greater London.
I have a lot more to comment about level 6 vs level 9 but I don’t want to add waffle that doesn’t help come up with a solution. I don’t believe having both is the core cause of the double counting. Nor do I think that deleting one or the other would, on it’s own, solve the problem.
I am hampered by my very rudimentary interactions with OSM. I did go and sign up (and managed to add a comment about a road that was unwalkable that someone else later acted upon) but I haven’t found it easy to navigate around.
I’d like to dig around it a bit more before adding more comments - can someone give me a hint on how I navigate to admin areas to see where/how these are defined?
Alright, so:
- Keep the Sydney that’s currently present
- Reset the collection of nested cities to either admin level 6 or 9; still undecided which at the moment
I fully expect this to fix things up 
… Part of the current issue is that there are cities that are not properly marked as being nested within Sydney, and this is causing the duplicate street issue.
Here are two links that will help view the two levels:
For both links, you’ll need to:
- Click the link
- Click the top left “Run” button
- Accept the prompt notifying that it’s a lot of data
- Click the magnifying glass button on the map to center the view
You can click each shape to see the city name.
The reason I don’t think picking either level 6 or level 9 admin levels will solve the problems on its own is that there are cities at both levels that aren’t nested in the larger Sydney.
For example, Katoomba, which is a level 9 area right on the edge of the Sydney boundaries as CityStrides has them is not nested in Sydney even though its geographic boundaries appear to be (using visual inspection on the map) wholly contained in Sydney.
On the other hand, many of the level 6 areas are also not nested in Sydney. As Chiswick Park identified above, these seem to be all the level 6 areas that sit around the edges of Sydney.
One example is Randwick City Council, which does wholly sit within the boundaries of Sydney.
Another is Sutherland Shire Council, which is not wholly contained within the CityStride boundaries of Sydney.
So getting rid of level 6 cities will leave some level 9 cities non-nested. And getting rid of level 9 cities will leave some (many) level 6 cities non-nested.
From a purely numerical effect on the street double counting issue, getting rid of level 6 cities would have the most effect. My suspicion is that there are relatively few non-nested level 9 cities, and these are on the very outskirts in lowly populated (and CityStrides-walked) areas. But it wouldn’t produce a pure solution.
I think the underlying cause is how the admin level 7 area has been used within OSM. I have deduced (maybe incorrectly) that this is what you used to define ‘Sydney’. I found an OSM Wiki page that sets out how admin levels are to be used in Australia.
Australian Tagging Guidelines/Land and boundaries - OpenStreetMap Wiki
This suggests admin level 7 is only to be used in the ACT (which is roughly equivalent to your DC). But clearly someone has used it anyway to try to define a “Sydney”.
In my previous post I compared Sydney to Greater London in size. I think they are similar in identity too - ie we Sydneysiders identify as Sydneysiders in the same way a Londoner identifies as a Londoner. But from an admin perspective there is a difference. Greater London is a true administrative region that equates to a level of government and is thus properly defined. Sydney does not equate to a level of government. (Our government levels are at the LGA level (level 6 in OSM) and state level (level 4 in OSM). So the term ‘Sydney’ is more of a concept than anything, and one that will be defined differently (around the edges) by different people. The OSM level 7 Sydney boundaries are not where I would put them (but my answer is no more wrong or right than anyone else’s).
As per Chiswick Park’s post, the issue with the level 7 Sydney is not just the boundaries but the inclusion of some level 6 cities (accessed via the CityMap toggle button). So it’s not you who made a mess of the Sydney area. It’s whoever created an admin level 7 version of Sydney. But without that, you would have no way of defining a Sydney in CityStrides.
My solution (preference) is to actually do nothing, and just live with the double counting of some streets. Total street counts from one place to another aren’t remotely comparable anyway. Walking in Sydney, every second street seems to be an Alfred Street, or John Street, or Campbell Street (etc), and these aren’t going to be credited to my total street count until I am close to walking the whole of Sydney - which will be never. That’s different to someone walking a smaller city with more imagination and originality applied in the naming of streets.
And given that Sydney is so large and practically impossible to complete, having both the level 6 and 9 cities defined helps set goals that make me feel I am making some progress.
But it would be good to hear from others walking Sydney to see what their preferences are.
This is all helpful. It’s difficult for you to see how using only admin level 9 will very likely fully solve this issue, because there’s currently bad data present in CityStrides. Katoomba is a good example of a city existing in CityStrides that should be nested within Sydney but is incorrectly nested in Blue Mountains City Council. This is due to the problematic presence of both admin level 6 and 9 in CityStrides.
Your points on admin level 6 definitely push me away from including that in CityStrides.
Reviewing admin level 9, it looks like Blue Mountains National Park, Cobbitty, Lower Portland, and Holsworthy don’t belong, which I can skip. The collection looks like this with those places excluded: overpass turbo
It actually looks like this is A Thing™ across all of New South Wales … All of these “council” named places look too large - you can search council at New South Wales, Australia - CityStrides to see the list - and many also contain some smaller admin level 9 places.
Except that, from a non-OSM viewpoint, Katoomba is in Blue Mountains City Council. It is the largest township within the Blue Mountains.
When I first looked at the map of Sydney on CS, the treatment of the whole Blue Mountains area is the first thing that struck me as weird. There are arguments both for including the Blue Mountains and excluding it from a definition of Sydney. It’s generally considered to be part of the outer metropolitan area (along with another three LGAs - level 6 cities). Each of these four level 6 cities is part in and part out of how Sydney is defined in CityStrides. But I suspect the flaw lies with whoever created that Level 7 admin area.
All four ideally would be wholly included in Sydney or wholly excluded.
Here’s another example: Medlow Bath (a small township adjacent to Katoomba).
When you ask CS to show Medlow Bath, most of it sits within the region defined as Sydney, but there’s also a small separate region that appears that is outside the area defined as Sydney (covering a small airfield, and not actually connected to the rest of Medlow Bath).
I appreciate your patience. Thanks for talking through all this with me. I’m fumbling through things as best I can & I appreciate your help.
Definitely agreeing with you here. There’s good clean coverage across New South Wales at both admin level 6 and 9 … and then this admin level 7 Sydney is screwing everything up.
I think my current main focus is answering this question entirely outside of any concept of Sydney at all: Is admin level 6 or 9 most closely mapped to “city”?
Random collection of admin level 6 places:
- Relation: Cobar Shire Council (6083910) | OpenStreetMap
- Relation: Clarence Valley Council (6143220) | OpenStreetMap
- Relation: Hilltops Council (6256597) | OpenStreetMap
Random collection of admin level 9 places:
- Relation: Ivanhoe (5734062) | OpenStreetMap
- Relation: Rob Roy (6070101) | OpenStreetMap
- Relation: Uriarra (5947827) | OpenStreetMap
(For Medlow Bath, if that is to remain, I’d probably shrug it off and place it as a nested city in Sydney.)
Please don’t thank me. It is we Sydney walkers who should be thanking you for creating something to track our walking/running and for investing time thinking of how to improve an obstinate city on the far side of the world!
I will come back and provide another response addressing your specific questions later today. I have to do a little work to prepare for uni in a couple of hours (and leave enough time to walk part of the way there to create some more purple lines on my miniscule life map).
Hopefully other Sydneysiders might have chimed in too.