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West Midlands, England has two records  XML
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steveha



Joined: 15/03/2016 20:10:00
Messages: 6
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I see two records for West Midlands. Both are tagged L.RGN, both have similar latitude/longitude values, and they overlap a lot. I think one must be redundant.

Here are the IDs:

https://www.geonames.org/2634343/west-midlands.html

https://www.geonames.org/11591953/west-midlands.html

I think ID 11591953 is better. I don't know much about England but I looked up West Midlands on Wikipedia and that one looks more like the map:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Midlands_(region)#/media/File:WestMidlandsRegion.jpg


I hesitate to just delete something this important so I'm putting it to the forum. Is the correct thing to do here that 2634343 should be deleted?
marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
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Both are correct.

Here the respective wikipedia articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Midlands_%28county%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Midlands_%28region%29

Best Regards

Marc

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steveha



Joined: 15/03/2016 20:10:00
Messages: 6
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marc wrote:
Both are correct.

Here the respective wikipedia articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Midlands_%28county%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Midlands_%28region%29

Best Regards

Marc 


Reading the two Wikipedia links, I see that 11591953 is the West Midlands region and 2634343 is the West Midlands county.

It wasn't clear to me at first why 2634343 should not be an A.ADM2, because the Wikipedia page seems to refer to the county in the present tense. But I think I figured it out:

West Midlands county is one of the "Metropolitan Counties" in England.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_county

Wikipedia wrote:
The county councils were abolished, but under the Local Government Act 1972, the counties themselves remain in existence, although they no longer exist in ISO 3166-2:GB as extant administrative subdivisions.

By virtue of the Lieutenancies Act 1997 they remain as ceremonial counties (sometimes called 'geographic counties') which have an appointed Lord Lieutenant. They are also used in certain government statistics, although they no longer appear on Ordnance Survey maps, which show the individual metropolitan boroughs. 


Is L.RGN the best feature class/feature code for a "ceremonial county"? Since these were actual counties before but now are ceremonial, would A.ADM2H be a better feature code?
steveha



Joined: 15/03/2016 20:10:00
Messages: 6
Offline

marc wrote:
Both are correct.

Here the respective wikipedia articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Midlands_%28county%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Midlands_%28region%29

Best Regards

Marc 


As someone who doesn't live in England, I am confused by this. But I did some further reading and I think I've figured it out.

West Midlands County is one of six "metropolitan counties" in England. These "metropolitan counties" were created in 1974, and then in 1986 they were all demoted to "ceremonial" status. So West Midlands County doesn't have a county code. Thus its current status is as L.RGN, just some kind of region (that, confusingly, happens to have "County" in its name).

Arguably A.ADM2H would be a sensible code since it used to be a county, but since it still exists as a named region (a "ceremonial" county) I guess it is best to have a code that isn't historical.

Here's the Wikipedia article about the six metropolitan counties in England.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_county
 
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