Waaaay OT by now...
> AAARRRGGHHH
>
> I give up!
>
> I was hoping that there is SOME system that would give these cities UNIQUE names... postal codes???
Ain't reality a bitch?
What you're looking for doesn't exist in the world of natural language
names -- it can only exist in artificially constructed global
geographic databases, where people may have assigned unique keys
to cities. And even there, the geographic experts are going to
argue over the exact meaning of terms. Is "Los Angeles" the
incorporated city presided over by the mayor or does it include
all the other small cities that Los Angeles surrounds and engulfs,
or does it included unincorporated parts of Los Angeles county,
or does it refer to Greater Los Angeles, the metropolitan area,
or is it related to Los Angeles county?
Not such a simple distinction, sometimes. San Francisco is
a city *and* a county, and the mayor of the city is also mayor
of the county. The mayor of New York is mayor of half a
dozen boroughs, the moral equivalent of counties.
Is Stonyford, California (population 150), a "city"? It isn't
incorporated as a city, or even a town, but it is an independent
geographic location that occurs as a "town" on maps. Where do
you draw the line between named localities and cities? Do you
depend on legally incorporated city status? But what if the
laws don't match up between different countries? How am I going
to know that "cities" in Bourkina Fasso match the same criteria
I use to designate "cities" in the United States or Japan?
Some cities have multiple postal codes, and some postal codes
cover multiple cities. And while postal codes are subject to
international treaty, how countries divide their territories
up and use the codes is still up to them.
--Ken
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Mon Sep 10 2001 - 22:09:11 EDT