Added geographic_area feature type in Divisions theme for supporting cultural and functional regions.

[pradeepbkkumar]

B. Related MINOR change steps

• Add a new feature type: geographic_area in Divisions theme

C. Public documentation and messaging plan

TODO.

Description

A geographic_area represents a functional or cultural region that may span across multiple administrative divisions. These areas capture regions defined by shared characteristics, community usage, cultural identity, or common perception rather than formal administrative boundaries.

The existing division and division_area types are intentionally designed for formal administrative regions and work well for those use cases.

To support informal, culturally recognized, or functionally defined regions, we introduce a new geographic_area feature type, with functional and cultural sub-types. This separation maintains clarity for users while allowing the system to represent non-administrative, colloquial, or contextual regions accurately.

Reference

• ADR for adding colloquial regions in Overture Divisions Theme
• RFD 57: Add geographical regions to the Divisions theme

Testing

• Added examples and counterexamples with appropriate validations
• Tested those examples by running the below commands
  • ./test.sh -m examples "divisions/geographic_area/.*"
  • ./test.sh -m counterexamples "divisions/geographic_area/.*"
• Tested the corresponding pydantic schema too
  • uv run pytest packages

Checklist

Checklist of tasks commonly-associated with schema pull requests. Please review the relevant checklists and ensure you do all the tasks that are required for the change you made.

1. Add relevant examples.
2. Add relevant counterexamples.
3. Update any counterexamples that became obsolete. For example, if a counterexample uses property A but is not intended to test property A's validity, and you made a schema change that invalidates property A in that counterexample, fix the counterexample to align it with your schema change.
4. Update in-schema documentation using plain English written in complete sentences, if an update is required.
5. Update Docusaurus documentation, if an update is required.
6. Review change with Overture technical writer to ensure any advanced documentation needs will be taken care of, unless the change is trivial and would not affect the documentation.

Documentation website

Update the hyperlink below to put the pull request number in.

[Docs preview for this PR.](https://dfhx9f55j8eg5.cloudfront.net/pr/<PUT THE PR # HERE>)

[stepps00]

Noting that this will replace #360

[jonahadkins]

🚀 🚀 🚀

[stepps00]

This looks great, thanks @pradeepbkkumar. Approved the PR, with one comment about the geographic_area name.

Right now, we've got these types in the theme:

• division (point)
• division_area (polygon)
• division_boundary (line)

The new geographic_area type features would be polygons. If the theme ever considered future representations for functional or cultural places as points or lines, would the same naming convention follow and we'd use geography and geographic_boundary as new types?

IMO this naming convention would be fine.. but bringing this up because there was some initial concern with using geography here. I just want to make sure we're all set for future iterations.

[pradeepbkkumar]

The new geographic_area type features would be polygons. If the theme ever considered future representations for functional or cultural places as points or lines, would the same naming convention follow and we'd use geography and geographic_boundary as new types?

Let's sync tomorrow on call on this.

[danabauer]

There is no proposed documentation plan to help users understand the nature of this change and how to use the new property and its data.