GeoNames Forum

Hello,

I am a little bit confused. Majority of US cities registered as ADMD. We are depending on cities1000 export. Recently we have discovered that we are missing huge amount of U.S. cities because they have ADMD code and are not exported.

I think this is a major issue. Either ADMD codes are missused or the cities export is incorrect.

Btw.: what is the use of having City of Chicago as ADMD (4887539) and then well defined city Chicago as PPL (4887539). What is the difference? Is that due to some Geoname's historical reason?

Thank you for a quick reply,
Pavel

Similar but old post - http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/1942.page

The ADMx are administrative divisions and of a completely different feature class then the populated places, it therefore needs two entries to describe this double-functionality.
Which cities are you missing?

Marc

Hi Marc,

thank you for the quick reaction. I have this feeling, that US have entered cities twice - once as ADM and once as PPL.

I think there might be a confusion on our side. I get the list of 700 geonames identifiers from the user which supposed to be "cities". Almost all of them are ADMD entries. I picked randomly 4 of them and I was able to find corresponding PPL entry based on the city name.

We will try to create a script to search for correct PPL geonames identifiers based on the name.

Thank you for your time,
Pavel

To resurrect an old thread:

In the newest release, there are 8000+ ADMDs in the US whose names begin with "City of" and which, as far as I can tell, correspond directly to PPL features, and unlike the PPLs, do not have polygon shapes or localized names.

What are these features meant to model exactly?

Rahul.

Geonames (ADMD) equals GNIS (CIVIL)

BTW, if you carefully read the FAQ answer you will understand the fundamental challenge in classifying places to cities, neighborhoods etc...

http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/faqs.htm (31)

An entry with Feature Class = Populated Place represents a named community with a permanent human population, usually not incorporated and with no legal boundaries, ranging from rural clustered buildings to large cities and every size in between; includes metropolitan areas, housing subdivisions, developments, modular home communities, and named neighborhoods (village, town, settlement, hamlet, trailer park, etc.). The boundaries of most communities classified as Populated Place are subjective and cannot be determined.

A community with Feature Class = Civil represents a political division formed for administrative purposes with legally defined boundaries (borough, county, incorporated place, municipio, parish, town, township).

(The Civil feature class does not include named residential neighborhoods, developments, etc. that are based on ownership of plots of land and therefore will have defined boundaries. These features are not considered political entities; they are classified as Populated Places.)

A small percentage of communities classified as Populated Place will have a corresponding political entity classified as Civil. In these cases, the entry classified as Populated Place represents the perceived metropolitan area usually extending beyond the legal boundaries of the incorporated community classified as Civil.

The feature classified as Populated Place and a corresponding entry classified as Civil are separate and distinct entities, as well as separate records (entries) in the dataset, each with a unique feature identifier. The two records have no direct relationship in the dataset except that they might have the same Census Code.

The two records usually, but not always, will have the same or similar names. The name of the political entity classified as Civil will include generic terms such as “City of…,” “Town of…,” etc. The name of the entry classified as Populated Place will not include such generic terms and is referred to as the short form. Example: Civil Class record = City of Denver, Populated Place = Denver.

Frequently these distinctions are not visible and are not common knowledge locally, and can be confusing, but they are necessary to identify properly and classify such communities for governmental purposes. The question whether one lives “in” a particular community depends on these definitions.

If the reference is to a community classified as Civil, which by definition has legal boundaries, that question can be answered with accuracy. If the reference is to a community classified as Populated Place, which in most cases will not have legal boundaries, the answer is subjective.

(It also is common for some to answer this question based on postal address and zip code, which have no direct relationship to either an entry classified as Civil or an entry classified as Populated Place (except perhaps a common or similar name), and therefore can be deceiving. See FAQ question #27 above concerning ZIP Codes.)

Most communities are not legally incorporated and therefore will have only one entry, which will be classified as Populated Place. Application of various community terms (city, town, village, settlement, hamlet, etc.) is determined by local usage. There are no standard lists of, definitions of, or rules for applying them, and there are no implied hierarchies among the terms: X Town might have a larger population and greater area than Y City.

The dataset contains numerous entries for communities within communities of all sizes, but does not establish hierarchical relationships among them; such relationships are beyond the scope and mission of the dataset.