Missing `division_area`s for major cities

[phgn0]

Hey!

I noticed that many large cities (subtype=locality) are present in the division dataset but have no related entry in division_area:

SELECT
  divisions.id,
  divisions.names.primary,
  divisions.country as country_code,
  divisions.population
FROM
  `bigquery-public-data.overture_maps.division` as divisions
WHERE
  divisions.subtype = 'locality' AND
  divisions.population >= 100000 AND
  NOT EXISTS (
    SELECT 1
    FROM `bigquery-public-data.overture_maps.division_area` as areas
    WHERE divisions.id = areas.division_id
  )
ORDER BY
  divisions.population DESC

This returns 3872 rows, including Beijing, Tokyo, Istanbul, or Berlin.

Many of those city boundaries exist on https://whosonfirst.org. Could we add their data sources to Overture?

Thank you!!

[chle-work]

I think the problem still exists for the 2025-10 release.
The cities you mention have no division_area objects with subtype=locality, but subtype=region.

I think I found the logic behind this problem and hope, this helps in solving the issue.

As example, I use Berlin which is the capital of Germany and as such a well-known city.
But from an admin hierarchy level this is not a city, but a region (Admin Level 4 in OSM).
And it seems that there's a gap for this kind of cities (also for AdminLevel 6) in Overture maps.

In Overture maps, these division_area objects have absolutely no locality indicator, so it has the looks as if these were normal states and not cities at all.

As a reference:
Berlin region polygon is sourced from https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/62422
Berlin locality is sourced from https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/240109189

There's even a link between this two objects, but only for type=division.
For type=division_area there's no indication like 'this is also a locality'.

To have a look at these objects in Overture Maps, you can query like this:

SELECT names.primary as name, * exclude(geometry, names) 
FROM divisions WHERE names.primary = 'Berlin' and country='DE' and region='DE-BE';

SELECT names.primary as name, * exclude(geometry, names) 
FROM division_areas WHERE names.primary = 'Berlin' and country='DE' and region='DE-BE';

My proposal to the Overture dev team:
Please add some indication to metropolitan regions that these areas act as cities.
Something like 'subtype=region + class=city' would be adequate.

Alternatively, add a duplicate of the division_area with subtype=locality.

If there's a simpler way, I'm also happy

[tijptjik]

The problem still exists as of 2026-03-18.0.

Is this planned for inclusion in a future release?

I'm considering to conflate it with the OSM data for the missing divisions - but it seems silly to have to add in some of the most recognizable areas in the world, considering OSM is already upstream from Overture :)