[OSM-newbies] Advice: Do I use "unclassified" downtown streets?

[Richard Weait]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Randy Thomson <rwtnospam-osm at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Charlotte Wolter wrote:
>
>>        I've been cleaning up the Tiger-based sections of the map for
>> Santa Monica, California.   In the downtown area, about 40 square
>> blocks, the streets are busy and not residential. But they also are
>> not through ways, providing transportation between areas. They were
>> marked "residential," but that's clearly not accurate at this time.
[ ... ]
> I ran into the same problem, and asked basically the same question. I
> never did get a satisfactory answer.

Hi!

I think that unclassified works very well in those situations where
the importance of the road suggests residential, but the road is not
primarily residential.  I typically use unclassified also for
light-industrial, commercial and variations on those as well.