[Tagging] Greenery adjacent to roads

[charlie at cferrero.net]

Jonathan Bennett (openstreetmap at jonno.cix.co.uk) wrote:

>  On 13/07/2010 07:37, charlie at cferrero.net wrote:
>> How might I go about tagging the often quite extensive green   
>> stretches of land to the side of larger roads here in Abu Dhabi   
>> (and indeed in many parts of the world)?  Sometimes this is just   
>> grass (in which case landuse=grass kind of makes sense) but often   
>> this is a mixture of grass, trees and decorative plants in varying   
>> proportions.  In many cases it kind of looks like a park, but   
>> no-one in their right mind would actually try to use it as such   
>> (and indeed, in central reservations they'd have to be suicidal to   
>> try).
>>
>> One idea might be:
>> leisure=garden or leisure=park combined with access=no
>> but this seems a bit like tag gymnastics to me.
> surface=grass is about all you can justify. They're certainly not parks
> or gardens (and landuse=grass is just wrong. You're using the land
> *for* grass? What does that mean?)
>
I mentioned landuse=grass because it is a documented tag (albeit a  
stub, http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:landuse%3Dgrass) and the  
areas in question have been deliberately planted with grass, rather  
than being natural (if they were natural they'd be sand).  I hadn't  
realised that the intention of landuse is to imply use of land for a  
particular reason beyond the merely decorative.

> Use the tags to describe what it is, and if it's just miscellaneous
> ground that's not really doing anything, then just map it as part of
> the surrounding area.

What it is, is an often extensive man made environment designed for  
decorative purposes.  Much like a garden, really.  But unlike the  
leisure=garden concept, you're not really supposed to go inside it,  
merely look at it!





-- 
Charlie