Google earth county boundaries

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Chris Bertram
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

Post by Chris Bertram »

Ruperts Trooper wrote:People don't like being "tidied up" ...
I don't know about that. In SW Birmingham, there's an area called Frankley (regular users of the M5 will recognise that name). It became built up in the 1960s - 80s, and the new estates spilled over the existing city boundary into Worcestershire. It finally happened in the 1990's that a local referendum was held in the Worcestershire parish on incorporation into Birmingham. The vote went in favour, so the boundary changed. The area (New Frankley) retains a parish council, I think this is the only parished area of Birmingham. Old Frankley, a small village, remains in Worcestershire.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

Post by Ruperts Trooper »

Why align to 1974 counties? Either align to current boundaries or traditional county boundaries - not something in between that suits a particular point of view.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Ruperts Trooper wrote:Why align to 1974 counties? Either align to current boundaries or traditional county boundaries - not something in between that suits a particular point of view.
Why *not* remain aligned to 1974 boundaries, if there's no good reason to change?
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Chris Bertram wrote:In SW Birmingham, there's an area called Frankley (regular users of the M5 will recognise that name). It became built up in the 1960s - 80s, and the new estates spilled over the existing city boundary into Worcestershire. It finally happened in the 1990's that a local referendum was held in the Worcestershire parish on incorporation into Birmingham. The vote went in favour, so the boundary changed. The area (New Frankley) retains a parish council, I think this is the only parished area of Birmingham. Old Frankley, a small village, remains in Worcestershire.
TBH, I think this was actually a very sensible change administratively; and something that really needs repeating elsewhere - there are similar "edge cases" on the eastern side of Birmingham too, as well as all around Wolverhampton where large chunks of the urban area are administered by South Staffordshire district.
Chris Bertram wrote:
Ruperts Trooper wrote:Why align to 1974 counties? Either align to current boundaries or traditional county boundaries - not something in between that suits a particular point of view.
Why *not* remain aligned to 1974 boundaries, if there's no good reason to change?
The trouble is that in many places, 1974 boundaries aren't in sensible places - sometimes they are, sometimes not. Most Yorkshire 1974 boundaries are too big, most West Midlands 1974 boundaries are too tight - and really WM should have been turned into two Met Counties anyway, with totally different boundaries (one based around Birmingham including the likes of Bromsgrove, Tamworth and Redditch; the other based around Wolverhampton and including the Black Country, Cannock, Codsall, perhaps even Kidderminster) and Coventry left as administratively attached to Warwickshire.

Where they are sensible, then yeah, why not leave the police and fire services where they are - though there is an argument that this constant amalgamation into ever-larger forces is silly: Birmingham, for example, is plenty big enough to support its own forces.
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Ruperts Trooper
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Steven wrote:there is an argument that this constant amalgamation into ever-larger forces is silly: Birmingham, for example, is plenty big enough to support its own forces.
A constant process of amalgamation has been going on, Birmingham hasn't had it's own force since 1974.

The West Midlands Constabulary was formed in 1964 essentially from the County Boroughs in the Midlands but excluding City of Birmingham - the West Midlands Police was created in 1974 from that, Birmingham City Police and parts of the surrounding force areas to serve the new West Midlands County - West Midlands Police is a partner with Staffordshire police and West Mercia Police for a number of functions.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Steven wrote:..Where they are sensible, then yeah, why not leave the police and fire services where they are - though there is an argument that this constant amalgamation into ever-larger forces is silly: Birmingham, for example, is plenty big enough to support its own forces.
Dipping my toe into the local authority administration water, it seems, to me, that with significant cuts still to be made in services, it is likely that the mergers and amalgamations that were mooted and rejected previously may well be the only way for many authorities to balance the budget.
Already we have, near me, a Dorset/Wiltshire fire service merger proposed and also most of Dorset (Weymouth, West Dorset and North Dorset districts) being administered from a single central office. Although currently keeping their own officers and teams it must surely be in the sights for future savings to merge the officials and teams so that coupled with the County Council there would be two near county wide administrations. What future then for the administration functions such as payroll, planning support, secretarial etc when these could be merged across administrations?
It may well be that for all the attachment to historic counties and boundaries, the realities of the current economic strictures following the recession (along with the current political will for "small" government) will drag public services and administrations into a new shape for the 21st century - whether they are any more fit for purpose remains to be seen.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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AndrewGPaul wrote:The version of Google Maps I'm looking at doesn't show any county boundaries on the basic view, but when I type "Merseyside" or "Greater Manchester" they both show up with a red border and pink shading.
You need to click on borders and labels in the bottom left hand corner
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Steven wrote:TBH, I think this was actually a very sensible change administratively; and something that really needs repeating elsewhere - there are similar "edge cases" on the eastern side of Birmingham too, as well as all around Wolverhampton where large chunks of the urban area are administered by South Staffordshire district.
I think you have to be careful here. Part of an estate that overspills a town's boundary is one thing. A complete village is quite another. We've mentioned Perton before - it's a dormitory for Wolverhampton, sure, but take it out of South Staffs, and you're depriving that district of quite a bit of council tax income. Ryedale, a large, mostly rural district in North Yorkshire is now barely viable because the northern suburbs of York such as Huntington that once made up about 40% of its population were absorbed into the new larger York unitary area. These villages and small towns that cling onto the edges of cities but are not part of them are actually important parts of the districts that they do belong to.

Anyway, Solihull is quite welcome to Chelmsley Wood, Birmingham built it but doesn't want it back any time soon.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Chris Bertram wrote:Anyway, Solihull is quite welcome to Chelmsley Wood, Birmingham built it but doesn't want it back any time soon.
If Solihull gave up Chelmsley Wood, it would probably have to give up it's share of the NEC.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Ruperts Trooper wrote:
Chris Bertram wrote:Anyway, Solihull is quite welcome to Chelmsley Wood, Birmingham built it but doesn't want it back any time soon.
If Solihull gave up Chelmsley Wood, it would probably have to give up it's share of the NEC.
Solihull inherited Chelmsley in 1974 when the county borough of Solihull merged with the rural district (yes, really!) of Meriden to become the metropolitan borough of Solihull. That's still reflected in the names of the parliamentary constituencies for the borough, with Solihull covering the town itself and Meriden the rest, still including Chelmsley. Initially Birmingham continued to own the council housing in Chelmsley Wood, Fordbridge, Smiths Wood etc, but it was transferred to Solihull later.

Bickenhill, where the NEC and airport are, was in that Meriden district, but although Solihull presumably collects business rates from the NEC it doesn't own any of it, it's all the property of Birmingham for now, though it may have to sell it off to cover back pay owing to women workers who weren't fairly paid over a period of years.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Have they not already sold it off to the company building the casino (etc) next door? Or is it just naming rights?


And as for boundaries. My aunt lives in Solihull at the end of a street with about 70 houses each side (she's number 130 and about 5 from the end). Part way along the street the post code changes and it becomes Birmingham.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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urbanfox wrote:And as for boundaries. My aunt lives in Solihull at the end of a street with about 70 houses each side (she's number 130 and about 5 from the end). Part way along the street the post code changes and it becomes Birmingham.
That's odd. It's rare for postcodes to align with local authority boundaries as they perform two completely different functions.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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jgharston wrote:
urbanfox wrote:And as for boundaries. My aunt lives in Solihull at the end of a street with about 70 houses each side (she's number 130 and about 5 from the end). Part way along the street the post code changes and it becomes Birmingham.
That's odd. It's rare for postcodes to align with local authority boundaries as they perform two completely different functions.
Rare, but not impossible, and I can confirm that this is what happens e.g. where Hall Green (B28, Birmingham) meets Shirley (B92, Solihull).
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

Post by Ruperts Trooper »

It's a historic thing in Birmingham which has had district numbers since, well a very long time, and the district numbers became the digits following the "B" in Birmingham postcodes - eg, Hodge Hill was Birmingham 34 so became B34 when postcodes were introduced.

I think other big cities did the same - London districts had something similar but with variation AFAIK.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Ruperts Trooper wrote:It's a historic thing in Birmingham which has had district numbers since, well a very long time, and the district numbers became the digits following the "B" in Birmingham postcodes - eg, Hodge Hill was Birmingham 34 so became B34 when postcodes were introduced.

I think other big cities did the same - London districts had something similar but with variation AFAIK.
Certainly true of Liverpool, Manchester/Salford and Glasgow. In other words, most of the cities with single-letter postcodes (S for Sheffield came later when the London "S" district was abolished).
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Manchester split many of its postal districts in the early 1990s.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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milly wrote: Tue Dec 16, 2014 19:03 Although I Prefer the traditional counties I would still like to see the modern day ones correctly shown .On my google earth mapping there is no boundary line between Merseyside and Greater Manchester . West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester and West and South Yorkshire. So Liverpool to Doncaster appears to be one large area. Just wondering if there is any way of contacting google earth to tell them of this error. thanks David.
Just found this super old thread! There is now an update with 'new' layers, but these have even less detail! The original ones that didn't how the boundary between the cities still exists.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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Chris Bertram wrote: Wed Dec 17, 2014 12:18 Or the border just needs to be rationalised, as boundaries have been many times in the past. Seriously, boundaries are usually where they are for historical reasons, and circumstances often overtake the logic for their placement, but they have to be somewhere. There's an area near Kings Norton where the Birmingham boundary with Worcestershire cuts through an estate, and therefore so does the West Midlands and West Mercia force boundary. Maybe it'll be tidied up one day.
The French rationalised their local government borders in 1793 (or thereabouts) when they introduced departements. They numbered their departements. Until a few years ago, the departemental number was embedded into the car registration plates and into their post-codes. In 1993 I was on holiday in Calvados (Normandy) - departement number 14 (at least most of the cars had a "14" on their registration plates) when i looked at the fine print on a milk carton. The carton had the number of the public health authority who had tested it - the numb er started with "14", so I suspect that it was administered on a departemental basis as well.
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

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jgharston wrote: Thu Dec 18, 2014 19:25
urbanfox wrote:And as for boundaries. My aunt lives in Solihull at the end of a street with about 70 houses each side (she's number 130 and about 5 from the end). Part way along the street the post code changes and it becomes Birmingham.
That's odd. It's rare for postcodes to align with local authority boundaries as they perform two completely different functions.
... unless of course the post office chooses (or is obliged to) to align its boundaries with the local authority boundary. An extreme case of this is in the Belgian town of Baarle-Hertog and the Dutch town of Baarle-Nassau. The two communities are intertwined siamese-twin like and there is a local bylaw applying to both communities that you are required to display your national colours on your front door so that the postman knows which country he is in!
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Re: Google earth county boundaries

Post by trickstat »

Chris Bertram wrote: Thu Dec 18, 2014 19:47
jgharston wrote:
urbanfox wrote:And as for boundaries. My aunt lives in Solihull at the end of a street with about 70 houses each side (she's number 130 and about 5 from the end). Part way along the street the post code changes and it becomes Birmingham.
That's odd. It's rare for postcodes to align with local authority boundaries as they perform two completely different functions.
Rare, but not impossible, and I can confirm that this is what happens e.g. where Hall Green (B28, Birmingham) meets Shirley (B92, Solihull).
Yes it may be the case that the postal town changes at the same point as the local authority changes. For example, both changing from Birmingham to Solihull.
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