It’s a Voronoi diagram. It’s nearest distance (in a straight line, not by road).
Comment on Mapping Australia by the Nearest City with a Population of 100,000 or More
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I don’t think “nearest city” is the best description.
It looks like, ABS identifies every urban area with at least 10,000 people, and then tags it with “the most relevant” centre in the region, or something like that.
So it’s something like, the way in which ABS divides localities into statistically useful segments.
naught101@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
I’m not sure I take your meaning. As best I can tell, it’s simply a Varonoi diagram centred on Australia’s cities of over 100k. The only complicated bit is how they chose the exact centre point of each city, especially Sunshine Coast and Central Coast. How the lines are drawn doesn’t seem to be based on any statistical data beyond that.
naught101@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Isn’t the city centre usually defined as the post office?
Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
I don’t know for sure, but that doesn’t really sound true. It sounds like on of those “just so” stories. Like when people say the definition of a “city” is a place that has a cathedral.
hanrahan@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
The GPO was the location for Main Roads Departments eg when it says 25 km to Ingham, they mean to the main Post Office. Well it was back when I worked for Qld Main Roads in the 1980s as a Surveyor. I forget the designated names for post offices, I think GPO was the main one in each town and PO was other branches ?
Of course when it says 25km to X and X has no PO I can’t remember what they used ?
That might be of zero consequence to the ABS or this map.