[Tagging] Religious landuse

Wed Aug 27 16:14:53 UTC 2014

Tom, I think you are interpreting the tag amenity=place_of_worship too
literally. In my opinion, this is not intended to only apply to the
specific place or building where the actual worshiping happens.

For one thing, we tag footways as highway=footway but footways are not
highways. And we tag city halls as amenity=townhall even though cities are
not towns (at least in many countries). It would be best to think of tags
as simply identifiers for a type/class of map features. Yes, the English
meaning of the keys and values of tags usually match the feature, but they
don't always have to match.

For another thing, we tag Scientology churches as amenity=place_of_worship
in OSM but scientologists do not really perform any practice that we would
call "worship" or "devotion". So, going by your logic, tagging their
churches as amenity=place_of_worship is wrong. (The debate on whether
Scientology should be considered a religion or not is moot;
religion=scientologist is an established tag in OSM.)

Lastly, you mentioned about parking amenities and you think that these
should not be included in the area tagged as amenity=place_of_worship, but
that they could be included in a larger area tagged as landuse=religious.
But again, going by your logic, we should exclude all parking amenities and
other non-educational features from areas tagged as
amenity=school/college/university. But that is not the current practice.

To conclude, including the temple/mosque/church grounds—even if there is no
worshiping going on the grounds—in the area tagged as
amenity=place_of_worship is perfectly valid.

On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Tom Pfeifer <t.pfeifer at computer.org> wrote:

> Eugene, I am not ignoring anything, I am arguing and listening.
> My "90%" were labelled as a guess in a discussion ("quite certainly"),
> the "1/3 of them have building tags" comes from taginfo.
>
> You give examples from 6 places where particular mappers use this
> style, this is also not a statistic. I have seen this style as well,
> and it only reinforces the need to find a solution that suits the
> different situations.
>
> If you have knowledge how the act of worshipping in a Buddhist temple
> differs from a Christian church or Jewish synagogue, in particular in
> being focussed on a particular building vs. practised in a more spatial
> manner on the religious campus, that contribution would be welcome.
>
> So far we have identified the following use cases / situations:
>
> 1
> Building where worshipping ceremonies focus, surrounded by land which has
> a relation
> to the religion, and holds structures that are not used for the act of
> worshipping.
> The building often has architectural significance and stands out as a
> landmark.
>
> 2
> Places of worshipping that are not focused on a particular building, the
> ceremony is performed in a spacial manner, potentially in open space.
>
> 3
> Land which has a relation to the religion, holding e.g. administrative
> office
> buildings, seminar rooms, etc., but no particular building for worshipping
> ceremonies.
>
> 4
> Buildings that were erected for worshipping, thus still have the
> architectural significance and landmark character, but are now used for
> secular purposes, such as concert theatres or climbing halls. Some could be
> reactivated for the religious purpose by bringing the altar back.
>
> I still find a landuse tag very suitable for case 1 and 3, where calling
> the land *=place_of_worship would be a misnomer for the lack of ceremony.
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 11:25 PM, Tom Pfeifer wrote:
>
>>
>>     Thus the comparison with [amenity=school], that can be easily
>> expanded to the
>>     whole campus, fails for [amenity=place_of_worship].
>>
>>     To conclude, [amenity=place_of_worship] should not be expanded to the
>>     full campus, and [landuse=religious] is a suitable, multicultural
>>     tag for this land, comparable to [landuse=retail] or
>> [landuse=commercial]
>>
>>     [...]
>>
>>     Thus "amenity=place_of_worship" is perfectly tailored to this
>> particular
>>     building and its meaning should not be expanded to something it was
>> not
>>     defined for initially. Keep in mind it is already used 611000 times,
>> only
>>     1/3 of them has a building tag, but quite certainly 90% of them are
>> buildings.
>>
>>
> Eugene Alvin Villar wrote, on 2014-08-26 23:34:
>
>  This completely ignores the current practice all over the world
>> (especially in Asia) where the landuse is already tagged with
>> amenity=place_of_worship. Some examples:
>>
>> Buddhist temples in Tokyo, Japan: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/4gi
>> Catholic churches in Manila, Philippines: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/4gj
>> Buddhist, Hindu, Methodist, and Muslim places of worship in Singapore:
>> http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/4gk
>> Buddhist temples in Beijing, China: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/4gl
>> Hindu temples and Christian churches in Bangalore, India:
>> http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/4gm
>> Buddhist temples in Bangkok, Thailand: http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/4gn
>>
>> I would like to see how you came up with the "90% of them are buildings"
>> statistic.
>>
>
>
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