"Cities" of Norwegian Stadia

I was told by a researcher a few years back that it was a conscious decision to do it this way. With no further explanation.

I agree with you, it is misleading, wrong, and a bit of a game breaker.

Is this part of the reason why some teams end up having stadiums twice if not more the size of their towns population after a few years?

Is it possible to get a comment from SI, or the head researcher for Norway?

We made a conscious decision quite a few years back to use municipalities (kommune) instead of cities or towns, yes.

I agree that this removes some detail that would be fun to have in the game, but there's also a question of making this more manageable from a research point of view. Municipalities are the smallest official administrative division in Norway, and it gets very hard to tell where you draw the line if you choose to make your own definition. Like for instance, how big does the town have to be to warrant a place in the database? I've had numerous bouts of mental gymnastics trying to figure out the best way to do this, but have yet to come up with a better solution than going with municipalities.

Going back on this now - adding all towns and cities in Norway - would require that we revisit each individual player and place them in their correct city, which is a quite monumental task. A person previously from municipality Bærum would now have to be placed in either Sandvika, Bærums Verk, Lysaker, you name it. So do realize that any proposed changes to the current system involves a lot of tidying up.

Previously we had a mix between cities and municipalities in the database, but that leads to a very messy situation where both towns and their overarching municipalities existed simultaneously as geographical locations within the game. You kind of have to choose one or the other. We went with municipalities to create a tidier database/research situation.

What has happened since then, of course, is the municipality merger reforms of the previous few years, where a good 50 municipalities or something suddenly went out of existence. So I'll agree that the detail level is on the borderline now. We certainly don't want fewer cities/municipalities than what we have now.

I like this initiative, though, and I'm open to doing some kind of database reform over the next year - for instance, we could identify some key municipalities that need to be broken up into smaller entities, but we'd have to come up with a plan that doesn't create an absolute metric ton of work and the changes need to be 100% warranted. So feel free to propose a system to replace the current one, either here or send me a PM, @Maaka.

4 hours ago, LarsC said:

We made a conscious decision quite a few years back to use municipalities (kommune) instead of cities or towns, yes.

I agree that this removes some detail that would be fun to have in the game, but there's also a question of making this more manageable from a research point of view. Municipalities are the smallest official administrative division in Norway, and it gets very hard to tell where you draw the line if you choose to make your own definition. Like for instance, how big does the town have to be to warrant a place in the database? I've had numerous bouts of mental gymnastics trying to figure out the best way to do this, but have yet to come up with a better solution than going with municipalities.

Going back on this now - adding all towns and cities in Norway - would require that we revisit each individual player and place them in their correct city, which is a quite monumental task. A person previously from municipality Bærum would now have to be placed in either Sandvika, Bærums Verk, Lysaker, you name it. So do realize that any proposed changes to the current system involves a lot of tidying up.

Previously we had a mix between cities and municipalities in the database, but that leads to a very messy situation where both towns and their overarching municipalities existed simultaneously as geographical locations within the game. You kind of have to choose one or the other. We went with municipalities to create a tidier database/research situation.

What has happened since then, of course, is the municipality merger reforms of the previous few years, where a good 50 municipalities or something suddenly went out of existence. So I'll agree that the detail level is on the borderline now. We certainly don't want fewer cities/municipalities than what we have now.

I like this initiative, though, and I'm open to doing some kind of database reform over the next year - for instance, we could identify some key municipalities that need to be broken up into smaller entities, but we'd have to come up with a plan that doesn't create an absolute metric ton of work and the changes need to be 100% warranted. So feel free to propose a system to replace the current one, either here or send me a PM, @Maaka.

I get the point you're making, it would be quite a task to change it. Still, it doesn't feel right as it is now, especially with quite a few of the mergers that happened in 2020, the aforementioned examples of Mjøndalen in Drammen, Strømmen in Lillestrøm and others are quite an eye-sore for those with local ties, I can guess. I live in the now-extinct municipality of Sørum, now a part of Lillestrøm municipality. And for a guy born in Oslo and raised as a Vålerenga-supporter, I'd wouldn't be thrilled to have Lillestrøm as my home "city" (since "city" is the term used in-game) if I were there (of course, my birth city would still be Oslo, but the point stands).

The main issue is that, as mentioned, the in-game term is "city", a "city" doesn't exist in any official statistical terminology in Norway (below national level there's only regional - county - and local - municipality - levels), the closest thing we have, which is used by SSB (Statistics Norway) is "tettsted" (urban settlement), and those are defined without regards to local borders. Ie, the urban settlement of Oslo actually extends from way down in Røyken/Hurum (now part of Asker) in the south-west, in to Lier in the west, to the north-western parts of Bærum, south almost to Ski, and then into Nittedal in the north and far outside Lillestrøm/Skedsmokorset in the east/north-east.

However, most municipalities that in some way have (had) city status ("bystatus") had a defined (named) area that were designated as a city. Those still exist, and in most cases, they can be defined by postal codes. Thus, it is possible to identity the main "cities" this way.

Another possibility is to use said postal codes. Even though most post offices now are extinct, the postal codes/numbers still exist, and they're maybe the best way to define "cities" for Norway. The main challenge is that we've got some 5.000 + different postal codes here (including many different for Oslo, major companies with unique postal codes - those to wouldn't shave off a large number of the total - and all codes for P.O. boxes - these would make an impact).

Adding to this, regarding "relocating" players, most people born in Norway (most, but certainly not all) are born in hospitals, and there are far fewer cities/urban settlements with hospitals, so this would reduce the task somewhat.

But, yes, I get your point, it would be quite monumental. However, I feel that (especially after the municipality reform from 2020) moving from municipalities to "cities" would create better realism in-game. I haven't got any "quick fix"-ideas for this now, but it should be "fairly easy" (technically speaking) to identify all municipalities in the database as of now, and then add the "cities" by postal code for each of those. Relocating the stadia in the database would be a larger task, but shouldn't be impossible, since every stadium has an official address, and that comes with a postal code, so it's "fairly easy" (again, techincally speaking) to "relocate" them this way. All the players (and staff/personell as well), that's the main obstacle though. I don't know how many people in the database has Norway as country of birth, but I'd guess it's quite a few..

Depending on what tools you're using (I probably don't know any of them, unless you're going with Excel), I can probably help out with the first (and also probably the second) aforementioned task, though.

Just now, Maaka said:

I get the point you're making, it would be quite a task to change it. Still, it doesn't feel right as it is now, especially with quite a few of the mergers that happened in 2020, the aforementioned examples of Mjøndalen in Drammen, Strømmen in Lillestrøm and others are quite an eye-sore for those with local ties, I can guess. I live in the now-extinct municipality of Sørum, now a part of Lillestrøm municipality. And for a guy born in Oslo and raised as a Vålerenga-supporter, I'd wouldn't be thrilled to have Lillestrøm as my home "city" (since "city" is the term used in-game) if I were there (of course, my birth city would still be Oslo, but the point stands).

The main issue is that, as mentioned, the in-game term is "city", a "city" doesn't exist in any official statistical terminology in Norway (below national level there's only regional - county - and local - municipality - levels), the closest thing we have, which is used by SSB (Statistics Norway) is "tettsted" (urban settlement), and those are defined without regards to local borders. Ie, the urban settlement of Oslo actually extends from way down in Røyken/Hurum (now part of Asker) in the south-west, in to Lier in the west, to the north-western parts of Bærum, south almost to Ski, and then into Nittedal in the north and far outside Lillestrøm/Skedsmokorset in the east/north-east.

However, most municipalities that in some way have (had) city status ("bystatus") had a defined (named) area that were designated as a city. Those still exist, and in most cases, they can be defined by postal codes. Thus, it is possible to identity the main "cities" this way.

Another possibility is to use said postal codes. Even though most post offices now are extinct, the postal codes/numbers still exist, and they're maybe the best way to define "cities" for Norway. The main challenge is that we've got some 5.000 + different postal codes here (including many different for Oslo, major companies with unique postal codes - those to wouldn't shave off a large number of the total - and all codes for P.O. boxes - these would make an impact).

Adding to this, regarding "relocating" players, most people born in Norway (most, but certainly not all) are born in hospitals, and there are far fewer cities/urban settlements with hospitals, so this would reduce the task somewhat.

But, yes, I get your point, it would be quite monumental. However, I feel that (especially after the municipality reform from 2020) moving from municipalities to "cities" would create better realism in-game. I haven't got any "quick fix"-ideas for this now, but it should be "fairly easy" (technically speaking) to identify all municipalities in the database as of now, and then add the "cities" by postal code for each of those. Relocating the stadia in the database would be a larger task, but shouldn't be impossible, since every stadium has an official address, and that comes with a postal code, so it's "fairly easy" (again, techincally speaking) to "relocate" them this way. All the players (and staff/personell as well), that's the main obstacle though. I don't know how many people in the database has Norway as country of birth, but I'd guess it's quite a few..

Depending on what tools you're using (I probably don't know any of them, unless you're going with Excel), I can probably help out with the first (and also probably the second) aforementioned task, though.

For the first part of an eventual task, identifying the postal codes needed, I did a quick search, found a list of all postal codes, removed duplicated place names, P.O. boxes and special codes, then I ended up with a total of 1.832 unique "cities". If you wish, I can send you that list?

5 hours ago, Maaka said:

Adding to this, regarding "relocating" players, most people born in Norway (most, but certainly not all) are born in hospitals, and there are far fewer cities/urban settlements with hospitals, so this would reduce the task somewhat.

Using birth hospitals isn't really a solution to the city of birth issue, even though that is literally what the field is called. You'd literally end up with no people with a rural place set as their home town, as you generally travel to the nearest hospital. The c.o.b. field has always been used as the (admittedly slightly dubious) term "home town" or "place you grew up".

5 hours ago, Maaka said:

Depending on what tools you're using (I probably don't know any of them, unless you're going with Excel), I can probably help out with the first (and also probably the second) aforementioned task, though.

Excel would probably be heavily involved in a remapping such as this

What I would need help with is actually tracking down individual players and setting their home town correctly, after an acceptable solution to the municipality split-up has been found. That will absolutely be the most time consuming issue in a project like this. Setting stadia and clubs in their correct places would require far less leg work. I'm sending you a PM and we'll take it from there.

If any other people have suggestions, please feel free to reach out.

On 14/02/2023 at 20:51, LarsC said:

Using birth hospitals isn't really a solution to the city of birth issue, even though that is literally what the field is called. You'd literally end up with no people with a rural place set as their home town, as you generally travel to the nearest hospital. The c.o.b. field has always been used as the (admittedly slightly dubious) term "home town" or "place you grew up".

I believe the "rule" in Norway is the hospital's location? I was born at Ullevål sykehus, so that's Oslo anyway, but both my kids were born at Ahus, while we were living in Sørum, and they both got "Lørenskog" as p.o.b. in their passports.. Anyway, that's besides the main point

 

I agree with @Maaka that the current use of municipalities are not really suitable with how it currently is. I mean, I'm from (now) Nordre Follo, but I would never have that as my "place of birth". While I'm technically born at Lørenskog (now Ahus), I grew up in Kolbotn and that would be my home town. So setting it as "Nordre Follo" feels wrong. The old municipality Oppegård felt ok since it was part of my home municipality growing up, but now after the merger I have no connection to Nordre Follo as such.

@LarsC - I don't think it's possible to get around a mixture of municipalities and cities/towns (tettsted). My suggestion would be to have a cutoff line at population. Every tettsted over (for example) 5000 population would be listed and the rest would fall under the more broad term of municipality. I've used 5000 since that's the "limit" to be called "by". Also, looking at the list of the 100 biggest cities/towns in Norway, we are almost at 5000 already, and a few of them are already in as municipalities. So it wouldn't clog up the database too much, I think.

I would also be able to help out with this, if you need an extra set of eyes and hands.

On 18/03/2023 at 10:27, XaW said:

I agree with @Maaka that the current use of municipalities are not really suitable with how it currently is. I mean, I'm from (now) Nordre Follo, but I would never have that as my "place of birth". While I'm technically born at Lørenskog (now Ahus), I grew up in Kolbotn and that would be my home town. So setting it as "Nordre Follo" feels wrong. The old municipality Oppegård felt ok since it was part of my home municipality growing up, but now after the merger I have no connection to Nordre Follo as such.

@LarsC - I don't think it's possible to get around a mixture of municipalities and cities/towns (tettsted). My suggestion would be to have a cutoff line at population. Every tettsted over (for example) 5000 population would be listed and the rest would fall under the more broad term of municipality. I've used 5000 since that's the "limit" to be called "by". Also, looking at the list of the 100 biggest cities/towns in Norway, we are almost at 5000 already, and a few of them are already in as municipalities. So it wouldn't clog up the database too much, I think.

I would also be able to help out with this, if you need an extra set of eyes and hands.

Thanks. I don't disagree with anything here. We are going to do a revamp for FM24. Still waiting for the FM23 cycle to finish completely, and then I'll be able to take a closer look. As I've said to @Maaka, the biggest job after deciding the criteria for a city to be in the game is to update "city of birth" for the 100s or 1000s of people in the database who have one of these broader municipalities set as their COB. That's where I might be in need of an extra pair of eyes and hands, so thanks for offering