[Tagging] tagging the multipolygon model (was landuse and military)

[Ben Laenen]

Anthony wrote:
> The problem with the landuse tag is it's being used for multiple
> things.  On one hand, it's being used to describe what the land is
> being used for - if people are using the land as their residence, the
> land is tagged landuse=residential.  On the other hand, it's being
> used to describe what sorts of things are present on the land - if
> there are lots of trees, it's being tagged landuse=forest.

+1 as I've said this myself on the orchard proposal talk page.

There it was a discussion about whether a orchard isn't actually a farm as 
well.

The only way I see we can solve all this is to get a new tag which is 
exclusively used for ground cover. Such a tag would then stop having all 
ambiguity, and stop all discussions like "is a lake in a wood part of the wood 
or not?".

But it's not the easiest option of course and has practical problems:
* so what will we do with the current tags?
* and how could renderers still be able to make sense of all of it to render 
something nice?
* it probably needs professional input to get a good list of all different 
kinds of ground cover
* it's moving into the realm of micromapping: you may need good quality aerial 
imagery, and probably a good knowledge of all ground covers as well
* so not exactly as easy for a mapper as just putting "landuse=farm" on a big 
polygon

Greetings
Ben