I think I love the idea - solve the problem of "you zoomed out too far, now wait for the server to load tiles for the continent you just asked to be rendered" - but I'm not sure what the use cases are where I need to know where West Bloomfield Township is in relationship to Waterford Charter Township (both suburbs of Detroit) but not what state they're in or even that the Great Lakes exist.
I would like to see a lot more data put into coastlines and a lot less into subdividing major metropolitan areas.