Municipalities Mapped

What does Swartland Local Municipality look like? Well it depends on what you pay attention to…

Below is an entity that represents the region commonly known as “Swartland Local Municipality“. I have categorized and displayed this entity by using Wikidata (blue D) and a GeoJson file (green G)

D

Adding metadata and spatial data

Conceptualising a data driven map.

Entity

Swartland Local Municipality

Q1530051

P625

Coordinates 33°22’00.0″S 18°47’00.0″E

P131

Administrative territorial entity West Coast District Municipality

P402

OpenStreetMap relation ID Use “79633” on Overpass Turbo

P911

South African municipality code Code

P3896

Geoshape Use GeoJSON file to create a map.

coordinates

P625

→

geoshape

P3896

G

Inserting points, linestrings and polygons in a GeoJSON file

To create a data driven map

Municipality code

WC015

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Data:WC015(2026).map&action=raw

Polygon

If we plot out the boundaries, is this what WC015 looks like?

{
 "type": "Feature",
 "geometry": {
 "type": "Polygon",
  "coordinates": [[[]]]
}
}

The formula is pretty standard, it can be applied to any of the local or district municipality.

Introducing Gov Directory

There’s a project called Gov Directory and the person behind the explainer video is Jan. I briefly met him (username Ainali) at the Wikipedian in Residence (WIR) meeting in Paris. Jan is a sysop on Swedish Wikipedia and is Swedish. We chatted about stuff. This Gov Directory IS a project after my own heart. Government should and could be using open data and file formats (and some are) to represent themselves and their regions (like Swartland local municipality). It seems that Jan has been responsible for WikiProject Govdirectory which has collected Local and District Municipalities Data from all over the world. This is good initiative BUT there is more work necessary from some local folk. Wikipedians (like me) and others who keep the information current (and also available in vernacular). This requires local knowledge and municipal officials.

Maps about South Africa on Wikimedia commons tend to be flatish images, drawn with SVG format. Currently the country has 44 district municipalities, and each of these municipalities have their own Wikipedia page (thanks to Ainali and other volunteers) and a corresponding SVG map. But Jan has not visited (at least he did not say so) Swartland (or any other district municipality), so perhaps the question should be broader.

What does (insert district municipality name) look like?

We could answer this with another representation. Here is a quick SPARQL query. We are going to be looking for geojson files (P3896) that are associated with District Municipalities (Q1589568)

SELECT DISTINCT
?item ?itemLabel ?geojsonFile
WHERE {
?item wdt:P3896 ?geojsonFile ;
    wdt:P31 wd:Q1589568 .
SERVICE wikibase:label {
bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en" .}
}
ORDER BY ?itemLabel

The result (when I drafted this post) was 12 GeoJSON files. There will be 32 more (since I am creating these files).

Update: I have completed and knitted those 44 GeoJson files together and made this district municipality map

Now who is in charge of representing these 44 municipality? The mayor, the city manager? Or a Wikipedian like me, Jan or other volunteers.

I think that local folks need to be involved

When creating a GeoJSON file for a district municipality map, these are a few key ingredients you need to bake your own GeoJSON file.

Collecting geospatial information

Ingredients and recipes

ENTITY: “West Coast District Municipality” coded as “Dc1”

• Geometry type
• Coordinate(s)
• Open Street map relationships
• Overpass Turbo
• Mapshaper
• Wikimedia.Commons
• Muncipality code
• Wikidata
• Wikipedia

Simple geometry types

▼

Geographic Data

Geometry types

Point LineString Polygon

Above are the ingredients I used to generate an “interactive” map. But the map is not the territory and an abstraction (as we have seen) is not the real thing.
I know that my mental model always needs to be challenged by humans, tested by the territory, modified by leaders and citizens.

Let’s ask the same question. Who gets to decide what Swartland Local Municipality look like. And will the answer be the same in English and vernacular? (excuse the auto translation). I speak code better than other languages.

Isimo sikaMasipala Wendawo waseSwartland sinjani?
Masepala oa Sebaka oa Swartland o shebahala joang?

My congratulations go to Twin and Fanjane and their NSO and ZU team. You will notice that other language groups. have un named local municipalities The Q numbers, instead of vernacular names, means that nobody has added a label.

SPARQL on the Western Cape

If we narrow things down and create a sparql query for the Western Cape

?district wdt:P31 (instance) wd:Q1589568 ; (district municipality)
wdt:P131 (administrative territory) wd:Q127167; (western cape)
wdt:P17 (country) wd:Q258; (south africa)

You will get five entities. They are the Wikidata entries for the five western cape district muncipalities. We don’t have much metadata about any of these district or local mayors.

A few of these district municipalities have been in the news for running excellent municipalities. Their Wikipedia pages however are still in need of attention. With a SPARQL query, we can see how open government works. For example, here are the recent mayors in Capetown since Helen was running the show.

SELECT
?mayor ?mayorLabel ?image ?startDate ?endDate
WHERE {
wd:Q5465 p:P6 ?statement.
?statement ps:P6 ?mayor.
OPTIONAL {
?mayor wdt:P18 ?image.
} 
OPTIONAL {
?statement pq:P580 ?startDate.
}
OPTIONAL {
?statement pq:P582 ?endDate.
}
SERVICE wikibase:label {
bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en".
}
}
ORDER BY ?startDate