Remove 'borough', 'macroregion', and 'macrocountry' from the subtype enum

[Mart van de Ven (tijptjik)]

Description

It appears that borough, macroregion, and macrocountry are no longer valid enum values, as they are no longer in use as of the latest release 2025-10-22.0, and the Overture Docs also don't make mention of them anymore.

However the schema still had them listed as valid enum values. This PR removed them from the schema.

Reference

• Overture Docs
• PR for the Docs

Testing

INSTALL httpfs;
LOAD httpfs;
SET s3_region='us-west-2';

SELECT DISTINCT subtype FROM read_parquet('s3://overturemaps-us-west-2/release/2025-10-22.0/theme=divisions/type=division/*.parquet') WHERE 
    subtype IS NOT NULL ORDER BY subtype;

result:

For example, looking up the subtype of "The Bronx", which previously was a "borough" and is now a "macrohood"

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>)

[Victor Schappert (vcschapp)]

Stephen Epps (@stepps00) Could you take a look at this one?

[Stephen Epps (stepps00)]

I'd be inclined to keep the schema as-is, as Overture may still maintain features at these subtypes in future releases. Each are valid representations of administrative divisions, removing them would leave gaps in the subtype hierarchy.

That being said, some work could be done to simplify the subtype definitions.. but I think that work would reclassify, rather than remove subtypes.

Saša Stanojkov (@sasastanojkov) thoughts?

[Mart van de Ven (tijptjik)]

Each are valid representations of administrative divisions

FWIW -- borough and other valid administrative divisions still show up in the local_type property, but the subtype in the data release (no longer) makes mention of them and (seems to) have reclassified them. See any of the New York boroughs for examples.

[Mart van de Ven (tijptjik)]

For additional reference, the motivation was to close the gap between the

Subtypes top-level docs and the

subtype schema docs

[Mart van de Ven (tijptjik)]

This would likely be superseded by work in #414

[Saša Stanojkov (sasastanojkov)]

I'd be inclined to keep the schema as-is, as Overture may still maintain features at these subtypes in future releases. Each are valid representations of administrative divisions, removing them would leave gaps in the subtype hierarchy.

That being said, some work could be done to simplify the subtype definitions.. but I think that work would reclassify, rather than remove subtypes.

Saša Stanojkov (@sasastanojkov) thoughts?

I personally am ok either way. If we strictly look at what we currently have in the data, I am ok with removing these subtypes.

[Victor Schappert (vcschapp)]

In the 2026-04-29 schema WG weekly meeting, Stephen Epps (@stepps00) took the action to raise this question in the divisions TF and decide whether to move forward with it (would require Pydantic update) or close it.

[Stephen Epps (stepps00)]

cc Pradeep Kumar (@pradeepbkkumar) - we discussed this open pull request yesterday. We agreed that the borough subtype will be needed for upcoming releases, and it sounded like some work was needed from your end to understand per-country requirements for the other two subtypes.

Let's review those macroregion and macrocounty requirements over the next ~two weeks. If we don't see the need to support those in the schema, we can drop them (though retain borough).

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