Dick Furno and I have been busy revising and expanding the populated places included with Natural Earth, released in December. We’re adding around 1,000 places to get to ~7,300 total towns and settlements around the world. We include more admin-1 capitals and make a first stab at linking to GeoNames via their unique IDs. Dick has gone over the towns and created a new 30m scale rank that helps cut the 20m clutter in half. We hope to have the update pushed out by the end of January.
Here’s a preview: Click images to see larger version
Added locations
(red = added general place, black = added admin-1 place at less than 10m scale rank, grey = existing places)
Scale rank changed
(red = change, grey = no change to existing or added at less than 10m scale rank)
Changed the name, location, feature class, population, or other property
(blue = changes to existing features, grey = existing or added)
Places with GeoName ID linkages
(green = with ID, grey = lacks ID for mostly small population settlements)
