On 4 April 2012 15:30, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
See other thread - if we can define the streets that lie within "Central", I think that would solve most of the problem.
OK, off the top of my head, opening bid for 'Central':
High Street Cornmarket Broad Street Turl Street George Street Gloucester Green St Giles New Inn Hall Street Queen Street St Aldates St Michael's Street Castle Street New Road Holywell Street Blue Boar Street Ship Street Covered Market / Golden Cross Magdalen Street (& East) Westgate Centre Clarendon Centre Pembroke Street
Any objections to any of those? This could be like a balloon debate but with streets! :)
Taking a historical perspective, Oxford's city walls demarcate a small area which is definitely central. These ran approximately from Oxford Castle, along Bulwarks Lane, through what's now St Michael's Street to Cornmarket, along the south side of Broad Street, to Catte Street, along New College Lane into the Turf Tavern, through New College then down Longwall Street; they cross the High Street and run down Merton Street then return along Christ Church Meadow immediately south of the colleges; they pass through Christ Church and along Brewer Street, and finally north of Turn Again Lane past the Westgate car park to Castle Street and back to the start.
See http://www.headington.org.uk/oxon/city_wall/
Maybe we could agree on the outer boundary of the central area and then list all the streets within that area? e.g. starting at Oxford Castle: New Road -> Worcester Street -> Beaumont Street -> up and back down St Giles' -> Magdalen Street East -> Broad Street -> Holywell Street -> Longwall Street -> out and back in along Magdalen Bridge -> High Street -> Merton Street -> Bear Lane -> Blue Boar Street -> down and back up St Aldate's -> Brewer Street -> Turn Again Lane -> Old Greyfriars Street -> Castle Street.
Owen
To follow up my own post, I thought of two other candidates for the central area: * the OX1 postcode area: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=OX1 * Carfax & Holywell council wards: http://www.oxford.gov.uk/Direct/SOAProfilesHolywellandCarfaxWards.pdf as well as the city walls: http://www.headington.org.uk/oxon/city_wall/
The OX1 postcode has a useful northern boundary including the University Parks but excluding Jericho. It also includes the railway station. To the south, it's less use, as it includes all of Abingdon Road and even Boars Hill.
The two central council wards together exclude the railway station; the River Cherwell is an eastern boundary and the railway line part of the western boundary.
Owen
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Owen McKnight owen.mcknight@gmail.com wrote:
To follow up my own post, I thought of two other candidates for the central area:
- the OX1 postcode area: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=OX1
- Carfax & Holywell council wards:
http://www.oxford.gov.uk/Direct/SOAProfilesHolywellandCarfaxWards.pdf as well as the city walls: http://www.headington.org.uk/oxon/city_wall/
The OX1 postcode has a useful northern boundary including the University Parks but excluding Jericho. It also includes the railway station. To the south, it's less use, as it includes all of Abingdon Road and even Boars Hill.
Boars Hill is clearly *not* 'central' in any sense! It wasn't even central when we lived near it in Botley! Also my feeling is that if we wanted to find everything in OX1, that ought to be possible from the actual postcodes rather than adding a locale... :-}
(Is that possible? Can you say "show me all the things with an OX1 postcode"? I know you could search for OX1, but presumably that would also find OX13 etc.)
The two central council wards together exclude the railway station; the River Cherwell is an eastern boundary and the railway line part of the western boundary.
I would agree that the station *isn't* central (at least it never feels like it's central when I have to walk there).
The council wards seem a fairly sensible area, but I think if we're going to tie 'central' to an objective criterion (which I approve of, as it minimises wrangling) I'd rather it was the city walls than ward boundaries. Not sure why, just a sort of irrational feeling that history is better than politics. YES I KNOW. :-}
Jx
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
(Is that possible? Can you say "show me all the things with an OX1 postcode"? I know you could search for OX1, but presumably that would also find OX13 etc.)
On RGL, we solve this problem by having postal district locales. So something in the "Croydon" locale will also be in e.g. the "CR0" locale. http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?Category_Postal_Districts
Kake
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
(Is that possible? Can you say "show me all the things with an OX1 postcode"? I know you could search for OX1, but presumably that would also find OX13 etc.)
On RGL, we solve this problem by having postal district locales.
That sounds like a good workaround (I assume it can be added automatically based on postcode?). Also v interesting to be able to see the postcodes on a map!
Jx
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 11:55:45AM +0100, Janet McKnight wrote:
Also v interesting to be able to see the postcodes ona map!
http://random.dev.openstreetmap.org/postcodes/#?%23%3F=&zoom=12&lat=...
Those boundaries are the "offical" ones from the Code-Point Open data release. Click the + in the top right, and you can change layer and pick from various crowd-sourced versions.
Code-point Open released the "centroids" of each postcode which have been grouped for the overlay above. For each postcode point as an overlay see
http://oscompare.raggedred.net/?layers=0B0FFT&zoom=17&lat=51.75524&a...
s
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Stephen Gower stephen.gower@wolfson.ox.ac.uk wrote:
http://random.dev.openstreetmap.org/postcodes/#?%23%3F=&zoom=12&lat=...
Those boundaries are the "official" ones from the Code-Point Open data release. Click the + in the top right, and you can change layer and pick from various crowd-sourced versions.
Code-point Open released the "centroids" of each postcode which have been grouped for the overlay above. For each postcode point as an overlay see
http://oscompare.raggedred.net/?layers=0B0FFT&zoom=17&lat=51.75524&a...
Wow, thank you -- I didn't realise all that info was already out there in such detail (& so clear!). OSM++. :-)
Also, OX4 is Bigger Than I Think. Though I do still want to walk round all of it one day (well, not all in one day, obv, but YKWIM).
BTW, do you think the openguide is just duplicating OSM? Be honest! :-}
Jx
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 12:42:44PM +0100, Janet McKnight wrote:
BTW, do you think the openguide is just duplicating OSM? Be honest! :-}
No! I, personally, am not convinced that OSM should have all the metadata on shops/restaurants that it does, but I think that horse has flown the nest. In any case, OSM shouldn't contain the free-text description and photos/etc that Openguides do.
s
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Stephen Gower stephen.gower@wolfson.ox.ac.uk wrote:
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 12:42:44PM +0100, Janet McKnight wrote:
BTW, do you think the openguide is just duplicating OSM? Be honest! :-}
No! I, personally, am not convinced that OSM should have all the metadata on shops/restaurants that it does, but I think that horse has flown the nest.
FLYING HORSE!
Ahem, as you were. :)
I should probably look at what OSM actually *does* have these days. Long time since I looked at it in any detail.
In any case, OSM shouldn't contain the free-text description and photos/etc that Openguides do.
Fairy nuff. Just starting to worry that we're duplicating effort in some areas...
Jx
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 03:19:36PM +0100, Stephen Gower wrote:
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 12:42:44PM +0100, Janet McKnight wrote:
BTW, do you think the openguide is just duplicating OSM? Be honest! :-}
No! I, personally, am not convinced that OSM should have all the metadata on shops/restaurants that it does, but I think that horse has flown the nest. In any case, OSM shouldn't contain the free-text description and photos/etc that Openguides do.
On reflection, and eventually coming back on subject, what OSM does well is record precise, verifiable, facts. Position, opening hours, name, etc etc. OpenGuides can record that too, to a certain extent, but what it does uniquely is record the subjective stuff (like child-friendly for example) and rely on the wikinature to keep consensus.
If you want to find all central restaurants in OSM, than you define a "central" polygon and then do a PostGIS (spatial PostgreSQL) query to select all restaurant points (and shapes) within it. What Openguides does is crowd-source the definition of central, by letting people apply it to whatever nodes they think are central. To find a definition of central from Openguides, you select all the nodes that are tagged with the central locale (and if you like, draw a polygon around them).
Of course, this is all theoretical, and doesn't deal well with the situation where one person want to tag the station as central, and another doesn't. Human nature vs wikinature, or something.
s
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote: [postal district locales]
That sounds like a good workaround (I assume it can be added automatically based on postcode?). Also v interesting to be able to see the postcodes on a map!
There isn't a way to automatically add the locale when a page is saved, but I could write a thing to automatically add it to all existing pages.
And yes, it is interesting to be able to see the postcodes on a map! As well as the postcode boundaries that Socks' map layer shows, there's also the potential to look at things like the distribution of pubs in CR0 vs W1: http://london.randomness.org.uk/scripts/locate.cgi?cat=Pubs&loc=CR0&... http://london.randomness.org.uk/scripts/locate.cgi?cat=Pubs&loc=W1&m...
(only available on RGL at the moment, not in OpenGuides core yet, hence London example rather than Oxford one).
Kake
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:
There isn't a way to automatically add the locale when a page is saved, but I could write a thing to automatically add it to all existing pages.
That would be good -- thank you & sorry for making so much work for you! :-} Would we then have to add new postcode locales by hand as we go along, or could you run an occasional cron job to add them to new things that don't have them?
[...] there's also the potential to look at things like the distribution of pubs in CR0 vs W1: http://london.randomness.org.uk/scripts/locate.cgi?cat=Pubs&loc=CR0&... http://london.randomness.org.uk/scripts/locate.cgi?cat=Pubs&loc=W1&m...
Cool! :-)
Jx
On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 03:05:05PM +0100, Janet McKnight wrote:
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Kake kake@earth.li wrote:
There isn't a way to automatically add the locale when a page is saved, but I could write a thing to automatically add it to all existing pages.
That would be good -- thank you & sorry for making so much work for you! :-} Would we then have to add new postcode locales by hand as we go along, or could you run an occasional cron job to add them to new things that don't have them?
What level of postcode? OX4, as you mention, is pretty big - do we want to get down to OX4 1 or not?
s
On Wed 11 Apr 2012, Janet McKnight janetmck@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote:
Would we then have to add new postcode locales by hand as we go along, or could you run an occasional cron job to add them to new things that don't have them?
We could do either of these - on RGL we add them by hand since it's not really all that much faff given that you're adding named locales anyway.
Kake
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Stephen Gower