United Kingdom has some more cities at different levels

I’ve merged some posts from another topic into this one.
Basically, it seems like there are either some admin level choice issues on my part … or there are some select cities to include from other admin levels.

Thanks James! One question I have is now that my home city has been split into its constituent wards, does that mean there will no longer be an overall percentage for the whole city?

Ah! So I may have grabbed the wrong admin level for Wales.

I’ve got United Kingdom as the country, Wales as the Region, and then from my searching around it seemed like OpenStreetMap had cities organized in admin level 10.

If you view the Data tab in this page, there’s a huge list of places. Do the names look like cities, or are they too small?
Similarly, if you view the Data tab in this page, are these cities or counties?

Hmm, interesting. The first is probably the smallest defined areas and include villages, towns and suburbs/parts of cities. The second is the 22 Local Authorities of Wales (effectively the equivalent of counties). The tricky bit is that some cities such as Cardiff, Swansea and Newport are also Local authorities. So while this level works perfectly for Citystrides in bigger cities, someone living in Monmouthshire for example has an enormous area full of different towns and villages to complete. To be honest I’m not sure what would be a better one to go with, either hundreds (thousands?) of very small areas or 22 areas with most being almost impossible to complete. Happy to help and ask others here that use it!

Hi James,

I think one of the problems with admin levels for the UK is that as Stewart said, they’re variable depending on the size of the city or town you’re looking at. For Wales, for example, admin level 6 is primarily counties (e.g. Carmarthenshire, which appears on your list of level 6 data) - but Carmarthen the town is at level 10, so that’s correct. However, the city of Cardiff (the capital) is at admin level 6, while admin 10 marks suburbs such as Roath.

Same problem in England - London is at admin level 6 and the London boroughs are at level 8. York and Portsmouth (a small city on the south coast) are at level 6, Manchester, Winchester and Northampton are at level 8, and most towns are at level 10 (though some are at level 8).

My personal inclination would lean towards using both level 8 and level 10, if that’s a possibility/realistic. While my home area is a level 8 borough, I think it’s a bit demotivating for others to complete their entire town and still be nowhere near completion due to also having to complete a bunch of other towns and villages.

Ah, ok - that’s something I can (probably) work with. There are a few countries where each region has its own city admin level(s).

If you check out the Countries sheet in this doc (I’m slowly porting this data over into the larger “Full Country/Region List” sheet). You’ll see Australia is a great example.
The UK is down starting at row 257. It looks like I’ve already sectioned off some of those, but it sounds like some cities are outliers … Kind of like how New York City is the only thing in New York at admin level 5.

Would it work out if everything at e.g. admin level 10 was brought into CityStrides and I manually included one or two (or however many there are) of the admin level 6 things that made sense? If that’s the case, I’d just need to know which places in the lists below should exist in CityStrides.

List of admin level 6 in Wales

Carmarthenshire
Pembrokeshire
City of Bristol
Ceredigion
Swansea
Neath Port Talbot
Bridgend
Vale of Glamorgan
Powys
Wrexham
Denbighshire
Flintshire
Gwynedd
Conwy
Isle of Anglesey
Newport
Monmouthshire
Cardiff
Torfaen
Blaenau Gwent
Caerphilly
Merthyr Tydfil
Rhondda Cynon Taf

List of admin level 6 in England

Herefordshire
Suffolk
City of London
Hertfordshire
Norfolk
Rutland
Warwickshire
Wiltshire
Cornwall
City of Bristol
Worcestershire
Surrey
Kingston upon Hull
Northamptonshire
London
North East Lincolnshire
Somerset
Oxfordshire
Southend-on-Sea
Thurrock
Lincolnshire
North Somerset
Bath and North East Somerset
South Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Cumbria
Northumberland
County Durham
North Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
Lancashire
East Riding of Yorkshire
Greater Manchester
East Sussex
North Lincolnshire
Swindon
Windsor and Maidenhead
Bracknell Forest
West Sussex
Brighton and Hove
Wokingham
Reading
West Berkshire
Slough
City of Nottingham
Portsmouth
Southampton
York
Derby
Warrington
Halton
Merseyside
Blackpool
Blackburn with Darwen
Middlesbrough
Redcar and Cleveland
Stockton-on-Tees
Hartlepool
Darlington
Cheshire East
Cheshire West and Chester
Isle of Wight
Tyne and Wear
Medway
Isles of Scilly
Luton
Bedford
City of Peterborough
Central Bedfordshire
Torbay
City of Leicester
Stoke-on-Trent
Telford and Wrekin
Shropshire
Kent
Milton Keynes
Buckinghamshire
Hampshire
Cambridgeshire
Essex
Nottinghamshire
Leicestershire
Plymouth
Devon
Derbyshire
Staffordshire
Monmouthshire
Dumfries and Galloway
West Midlands Combined Authority
Kent
Middlesex
Surrey
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole
Dorset

List of admin level 6 in Scotland

Orkney Islands
Highland
Argyll and Bute
Moray
Dumfries and Galloway
Aberdeen City
Aberdeenshire
Stirling
Fife
Glasgow City
North Ayrshire
West Lothian
Perth and Kinross
Scottish Borders
West Dunbartonshire
East Ayrshire
South Ayrshire
North Lanarkshire
East Dunbartonshire
Clackmannanshire
Falkirk
City of Edinburgh
East Lothian
Midlothian
Angus
Dundee City
East Renfrewshire
Inverclyde
Renfrewshire
South Lanarkshire
Na h-Eileanan Siar
Shetland Islands

List of admin level 6 in Northern Ireland

County Tyrone
County Fermanagh
County Antrim
County Armagh

It’s more than one or two, but for England, I’d include the following from admin level 6:

Level 6

City of London
City of Bristol
Kingston upon Hull
Southend-on-Sea
Thurrock
Bath and North East Somerset
Swindon
Windsor and Maidenhead
Bracknell Forest
Brighton and Hove
Wokingham
Reading
Slough
City of Nottingham
Portsmouth
Southampton
York
Derby
Warrington
Halton
Merseyside
Blackpool
Blackburn with Darwen
Middlesbrough
Redcar and Cleveland
Stockton-on-Tees
Hartlepool
Darlington
Medway
Isles of Scilly
Luton
Bedford
City of Peterborough
Torbay
City of Leicester
Stoke-on-Trent
Telford and Wrekin
Milton Keynes
Plymouth
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

The others are counties encompassing a number of separate cities, towns and villages.

There are also some cities at level 8, just to make things more awkward.

Level 8

Birmingham
Bradford
Cambridge
Canterbury
Carlisle
Chelmsford
Coventry
Exeter
Gloucester
Lancaster
Leeds
Leicester
Lichfield
Lincoln
Liverpool
City of London
Manchester
Newcastle upon Tyne
Northampton
Norwich
Oxford
Peterborough
Preston
Salford
Sheffield
St Albans
Sunderland
Wakefield
City of Westminster
Winchester
Wolverhampton
Worcester

Additionally, the London Boroughs are all at level 8, with the exception of the City of London which is level 6.

That took a lot more research than I’d expected and likely more work for you than is at all reasonable. But may as well share it, having educated myself if nothing else :laughing:

Edit: I think the shorthand version was yes, that sounds like a plan that could work well.

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I’m unsure if my topic merging alerted you @stewartharding1 & @jessp so I want to post again here to make you aware that I’ve split this conversation out into its own thread.

It looks like @jessp helped collect some missing cities at the admin level 6 & 8. I think that all the cities in admin level 8 should already be in CityStrides.

I think at this point, I still need help collecting the full list of admin level 6 places to include in CityStrides.

Additionally, the London Boroughs are all at level 8, with the exception of the City of London which is level 6.

A similar thing happens for New York City, and the consensus over there is that they would like the Boroughs present in CityStrides as well as the full NYC. How do you feel about London & its Boroughs?

Hi James,

For London:
I think the boroughs should certainly stay. I think it would be good to have London as a whole available too, although running all 50,000 ish streets isn’t necessarily something I’d want to take on myself :laughing:

I didn’t think to mention this before, but London as in the entirety of London encompassing all boroughs is at level 6 Relation: ‪London‬ (‪65606‬) | OpenStreetMap. However, City of London is a city of its own at the centre of London and is also at admin level 6. Relation: ‪City of London‬ (‪51800‬) | OpenStreetMap - I only just noticed that it isn’t in CityStrides any more. There were quite a few people who were close to completing it - I’d imagine they’d be keen to see it back.

I can have a look at the other admin level 6 areas you listed tomorrow and get back to you on that.

LOL cities are weird
:man_shrugging: I find it hilarious that London has a tiny London carved out of the middle of it.

Some kind of hipster London (this little London was the real London before it got big)?

Or maybe little London was first, and it filled up, but people still wanted to say they lived in London so they made it bigger but then the people that lived in little London got very upset and demanded that they be left out of big London?

Or the person who made the first map marked out little London and then people noticed that they missed all this other London but they were working with ink so they couldn’t erase little London so they just had to draw out big London around it, thereby excluding little London? Were they invited to parties after that screwup?

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The City of London has broadly the same boundaries as the roman settlement of Londonium, so it has been around for a while! Nowadays, it is essentially the financial district of London and has some pretty unique features, such as giving businesses based there votes in elections, having its own police force, and maintaining a level of medieval pageantry totally at odds with how modern everything else there is. It’s a weird and wonderful place.

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Great video to explain it: The (Secret) City of London: History Edition - YouTube

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Hi,
Brighton and Hove - a city / Unitarian authority, which as per the OSM docs is level 6, is not currently showing for me.

Thanks
Chris (apologies if this is the wrong place to put it)

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I’d love to know what the Romans would say about you calling their important port city of Londinium ‘hipster London’ :laughing: But yes, essentially it was the real London back in the day! There’s actually a little bit of the original city wall left, which was built in about 220 AD. There are quite a few places in central London where modern sits side-by-side with centuries old, but it’s particularly striking in the City. It’s a fun place to wander around, especially at the weekends when there aren’t so many people around.

So for Wales, I agree with @jessp above and would include Welsh areas at level 10. However, if possible I would ask for Cardiff at level 6 to also be included as it’s the only one of the local authorities that would be runnable (although a challenge) and just about makes sense as a single area. Others such as Swansea, Newport and Bridgend contain the urban centres, but also rural areas and whole other towns and villages.

I feel it’s a shame that places such as the city of Swansea won’t be included, but as the city and the county are technically one and the same I don’t know how you’d separate them or even if there is an official ‘city’ border within the broader area.

This is an excellent update and I appreciate all your hard work and attention to detail!

No problem including Cardiff. :+1:

I can also include Swansea, Newport and Bridgend - not a huge amount of work (famous last words).
It does look like there are some admin level 10 places within Swansea, like Rhossili - should those be included?

Sorry, I was unclear. I don’t think Swansea, Newport and Bridgend should be included because of those large rural areas. I’m not sure choosing which level 10 areas make up a larger town/city would work as it could be a bit arbitrary and one of those things that locals would all have a different opinion on which ones should be included.

So does this mean we get the small areas of Cardiff as their own cities and Cardiff as a whole?
Originally I would have said to just have Cardiff as a whole, but since the upgrade I’ve been loving having the smaller areas. It’s helped me focus and I would love for them to stay, but have an overarching city too please.

Hello, just to add to this: I agree with the suggestion higher up of including UK places at level 8 and level 10 (plus maybe some custom level 6 mixed in).

Level 8 ie borough/county-level is still pretty large. My London borough has 1,500 streets in it, which is not impossible, but is much bigger than most places seem to be in the United States or Europe. Level 10 (ward-level) seems to be more comparable.

I wouldn’t mind having both 8 and 10 available simultaneously, where I live. In fact I think it’d be all the better for it. It’d give me micro-targets of completing individual wards plus a macro-target of copleting the whole borough…

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More strangeness!

None of Scotland’s 7 cities appear (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, Stirling, Perth,Inverness).

Neither do any of the towns I’ve searched for (Falkirk, Dunfermline, Hamilton, Glenrothes).

The good news is that my ward area for Edinburgh shows as I’d expect it to

Cheers Nodds