Confused about some of the admin 1 subdivisions

[connormitchell4]

I was looking at the admin 1 subdivision data (geojson/ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces.geojson) and it seems like for some countries like France and Spain the dataset uses the second level subdivisions instead. I was wondering why this is the case. I read on the Natural Earth website under the issues section for the boundary data: "A separate version should be created for “region” groupings of admin-1. Many countries, like France, include top level regions and departments, both as admin-1 ranking." but I haven't yet found a source that claims France's top level subdivisions are its departments.

Any insight to clear up the confusion would be helpful. Thanks.

[nvkelso]

Natural Earth focuses on 1st order admin, while the regions you mention in France and Spain are actually reported to ISO by those countries as groupings of 1st order admins. That's way NE considers them "admin-1 regions" not "admin-1".

Natural Earth v5 attributes the admin 1 boundary lines if they are "regional" or "basic" 1st order subdivision boundaries. But only builds polygons for the provinces / departments not the regions. You could use a tool like Mapshaper to build and label the polygons yourself.

In version 6 we'll make prebuilt polygons for each available. Right now we're going thru general admin-1 rebuild (85% complete) and then 2nd pass will build those polygons.