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I am working on a geographically aware high score server, and would like to be able to list scores like "First place in Dutchess County" or "Third place in the State of New York". I can reverse geocode the user's location and get a placemark that lists AdministrativeArea, etc.

The reverse geocoder used by iOS and Google would return "Dutchess" and "New York" for the above examples, so I need to supply "County" and "State" for the United States.

However, the game is global, so I need to know the names of each geographic organization level in other English-speaking countries.

So, in the United States, Google / iOS placemark levels would be described as following:

AdministrativeArea = "State"

SubAdministrativeArea = "County" (or "Parish" in Louisiana)

Locality = "City" or "Town"

Sublocality = (I'm calling this "Neighborhood")

PostalCode = "Zip Code"

What are all of these levels called in other English-speaking countries? (Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, etc). If there's a resource that lists all these, I would love to know it. I think I may just not know what to search for on the web.

Chris Garrett
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1 Answers1

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I'm not entirely sure of the effort/value ratio of this exercise. It could get rather difficult, especially with unitary authority areas in England.

In most of the United Kingdom,
country is "United Kingdom" [ie the country name]
administrative_area_level_1 could be "England" or "Scotland" etc [ie the country name]
administrative_area_level_2 might be "East Sussex" [county]
locality might be "Hailsham" [town]
postal_code is a postcode

However in London,
administrative_area_level_2 is "London" which isn't a county
administrative_area_level_2 might be "Greater London" too
administrative_area_level_3 might be "London Borough of Lewisham" [yay! Borough makes sense]
locality is "London" which isn't a locality

In unitary authority areas in England,
administrative_area_level_2 might be "Medway"
Unitary authorities replace county council and borough/district councils, but they are located within a "ceremonial county" which is what most people will use ordinarily. Places in Medway Council's area are in Kent. Unfortunately these county names aren't returned by the geocoder. Some counties (eg Berkshire) were abolished completely and replaced entirely by unitary authorities. However the old county name (Kent, or Berkshire) is the right name to use.

Andrew Leach
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  • @Andrew Leach I am hitting my head against the wall.. could you please tell me what is the name of the property that will return the borough for any given postcode? I have posted a question too. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49221732 . – bibscy Aug 13 '18 at 11:49