[OSM-dev] proposal to kill areas

[Ben Gimpert]

On Sun, 23 Jul 06 @01:08am, Andy Robinson wrote:
> >There is probably room for a physical boundary based definition as well as
> >a collection of nodes based definition.  But, the physical boundary based
> >definition is actually just a set of nodes that have a common attribute;
> >they all belong to the same way element.
> >
> >Very interesting idea...
> >
> >Etienne
> >
> 
> Thanks for summing it up better than I could have ;-)
> 
> The physical boundary that we can physically map is less of a problem. I
> already had a "boundary" key in Map Features for that very purpose so it
> really doesn't need to be more complicated than a way. 
> The container of nodes would work exactly as you surmise. I just haven't
> done it yet although I can see that a trial run with post_boxes is a good
> idea for me too. I've just realised that I have been tagging ways with
> postal_code data but it would have been better to code the nodes as well. Oh
> well, more editing. Thank goodness for JOSM :-)

Possible proof of concept:  The TIGER import has been quite consistent
with "from_zip" and "to_zip" tags on ways (for US post codes), so taking
a crack at Andy's "implicit areas" technique is possible right now.

		Ben