The British Columbia extract on Geofabrik’s download server has reached a size of over 1 GB which is normally where I split regions into smaller chunks. If at all possible I’d like to split BC into 4-8 regions and not into ~30 districts! I’ve tried to find out what a “natural” grouping would be but nothing is immediately obvious. The six regions listed on https://www.alc.gov.bc.ca/alr-maps/ (Interior, Island, Kootenay, North, Okanagan, South Coast) would seem like a good choice to me. Do you think that is something people could work with? Would it be obvious to someone who lives, say, in Pemberton that they are part of the “South Coast” region?
I think using the regions shown in the ALR maps, as you have suggested, is good. I don’t believe there is any obvious best way to divide BC into 4-8 regions. I have linked, below, several other ways the provincial government has divided BC.
FWIW, in all cases, Pemberton ends up in the South Coast.
Health Boundary Maps - Province of British Columbia
I like (and proposed) the ALR regions since their boundaries align with district boundaries except for Columbia-Shuswap and there are relatively few cases where someone wants both sides of a boundary unless they are doing a much larger area. Other divisions split the lower mainland, the Trail area, or the Okanagan
My only concern is that the file size breakdowns are reasonable. The density of data in OSM is odd for BC since the amount of data doesn’t necessarily correlate with the detail in the map or the population. It makes it hard to predict if the South Coast is too large an area.
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… and Squamish-Lillooet, of which a small part has been given to the “Interior” region while the larger part is in “South Coast”, right?
I have now implemented the split as discussed.
It appears that this fear was unfounded… “North” is the largest region by far ;). But this imbalance is not a problem - someone who is only interested in e.g. Vancouver Metro will now save 80% of space for the download.
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