Suburbs and localities (Australia)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Suburbs and localities are the names of geographic subdivisions in Australia, mainly for address purposes. The name locality is used in rural areas, while the equivalent in urban areas are suburbs. Sometimes locality is used to refer to both localities and suburbs, and they are also called address localities.[1]. Localities are also known as towns and rural districts in Victoria, such as on various maps. Note they are different to the ABS's Urban Centre Localities, a statistical division. Localities have also been used to refer to locations within cities which are not suburbs.

Localities and suburbs are determined by the local council in which they are located, based on community recognition and subject to approval of the state's geographical names board. Localities have existed in the past as informal units, before the 1996 decision of the Intergovernmental Committee for Surveying and Mapping and the Committee for Geographic Names in Australasia (CGNA) to name and establish official boundaries for all localities and suburbs[2]. In the last ten years there has been a process to formally define their boundaries and to gazette them, which is almost complete. In March 2006 only South Australia and the Northern Territory had not completed this process.[3] Localities also now relate closely with postcode boundaries. [4] There are over 15,000 locality and suburb boundaries in Australia.[5]

The CGNA's Gazetteer of Australia recognises two types of localities - bounded and unbounded. Their definition of bounded localities include towns, villages, populated places, local government towns and unpopulated town sites, while unbounded localities include place names, road corners and bends, corners, meteorological stations, ocean place names and surfing spots.[6]

[edit] Reference

  1. ^ Determining suburbs and localities in NSW
  2. ^ Queensland Natural Resources, Mines and Water Place names - localities and suburbs
  3. ^ Naming of Northern Territory Suburbs and Localities
  4. ^ Postcode boundaries
  5. ^ MapInfo, Suburbs and Localities overview.
  6. ^ Feature Codes used by the Gazetteer of Australia. Geoscience Australia. Retrieved on 2007-03-04.

[edit] External links