[Tagging] musings on landuse

[Nathan Edgars II]

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 4:26 AM, Lennard <ldp at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> On 27-9-2010 10:16, Nathan Edgars II wrote:
>
>> Landuse should be covered by land cover (and buildings) where said
>> cover exists. For example a landuse=retail area may be over half
>> amenity=parking areas.
>
> And yet we call forests/heath/grass/etc land *use* instead of land *cover*.
>
> It feels like we're rehashing old discussions.
>
> What do you know, we are:
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2009-October/000106.html

It's not really the same discussion. Clearly a lake can be part of a
residential area (think of a bunch of lots on the lake with a private
dock extending from each one), but a lake will not be part of a meadow
or forest.

But what I'm mostly concerned with is having a limited number of
"top-level" landuse values. For example a large residential
neighborhood can be tagged landuse=residential, but there's no similar
value for an area full of government buildings or a tourist strip.
(But back to the linked discussion: I use nested landuse polygons all
the time; a named residential neighborhood can have a small retail
area within it that's considered to be part of the neighborhood. This
is about the largest polygons which may or may not have smaller ones
within them.)