Talk:Matrix of country subdivisions

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[edit] Australian Territories

Australia has 3 mainland territories. Northern Territory and the ACT are self governing - basically much like the Australian states , the third (Jervis Bay) created in 1989 by splitting the ACT is not self governing. There is also one external self governing territory of Australia (Norfolk Island). There is a further 6 "external" (non self governing) territories. Most of these external territories are near Australia except the Antartic Territory and Heard/MacDonald. Two of these - Christmas Island and Cocos/Keeling Islands are populated but the other four have no regular population. As claims to the Antarctic are not universally recognised I've put AU 9 on the trritories list. I'm not sure if this meets the articles requirements - or if I should have shown some of the six "external"s at a different "level".

[edit] Switzerland

Regarding Switzerland: Districts are in Switzerland administrative units, but not subnational entities - they are not even mentioned in the constitution. There is no independent government of districts (if there is a nominated head of district (often there is not) he's legally a local deputy of the cantonal government from where he gets his directions), there is no legislation at district level, no district level budget decisions, etc. (all of this exists at canton level and independently from the canton at municipality level). The districts role is administrative, e.g., proportional elections are often calculated using the district totals and often certain functions of the canton are managed at district level (e.g. district prison, district court, district prosecutor). --Irmgard 17:25, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Boroughs of the United States

The U.S. has four different kinds of boroughs, in different locales, only one of which is represented in the table as shown:

  1. Boroughs are the equivalent of counties in Alaska (shown at level 2). Most of the land area of the state is part of one, distinguished "unincorporated borough".
  2. Boroughs are the official subdivisions of New York City (3). They also happen to coincide with (differently-named) counties, which are subdivisions of New York State. (NYC is a special, level-2 entity under the New York State Constitution; all other cities in NYS are subordinate to counties.)
  3. Boroughs are a form of local government in Pennsylvania and Connecticut, subordinate to a township or one or more towns, respectively (comparable to a village in New York and Vermont) (4).
  4. Boroughs are a form of local government in New Jersey, of equal status to townships and cities (3).
121a0012 03:53, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

new article at: Boroughs of the United States Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:40, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Nth-level"

Wither the nature of the "1st-level", "2nd-level" etc divisions and their linked categories?  Are they meant to correspond to the five NUTS+LAU levels?  Thanks, David Kernow 22:56, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

--- from User_talk:Tobias Conradi [1]---

Hello Tobias,
Thought you'd like to know I've recently concluded a useful email correspondence with a member of staff at the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). In short, it appears the NGA uses a four to five level system not unlike NUTS+LAU; I've transcribed it from the table sent by email into the wikitable below:

Feature Designation
Code Name Text
ADM1 first-order administrative division a primary administrative division of a country, such as a state in the United States
ADM2 second-order administrative division a subdivision of a first-order administrative division
ADM3 third-order administrative division a subdivision of a second-order administrative division
ADM4 fourth-order administrative division a subdivision of a third-order administrative division
ADMD administrative division an administrative division of a country, undifferentiated as to administrative level

The NGA leaves the definitions ("Text" in the above table) of ADMs 2-4 "intentionally vague... All we attempt to identify with the ADM is the hierarchical structure, and if there is no hierarchy, then the level of importance or size (with ADM1 being the largest)."

In a table of global country subdivisions, would you expect all those entities found in a particular column (i.e. at a particular level) to be similar in "importance or size" – presumably where "size" might mean area or population...?

Regards, David Kernow 12:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

equality will be hard. Some ADM1 may be much smaller than ADM3 of other countries. From what I seee, NUTS+LAU is more about equaltiy, NGA less. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 14:46, 13 July 2006 (UTC)