[Tagging] Public buildings

[Colin Smale]

I agree, John. 

The boundary between "public buildings" and others is becoming
increasingly vague. Many "governmental" tasks are carried out by third
parties nowadays, for example many prisons are operated by private
companies on behalf of the state, same with a lot of healthcare
provision (which in parts of Europe such as the UK *IS* a governmental
task). Do we care if a museum is state-run or privately-run? They are
all amenity=museum, with owner=government or whatever.

Using landuse=* or building=* to indicate a "public building" makes no
sense to me. We should choose a paradigm, and apply it consistently.
What makes a building a "public building"? 

* If "public" in this case is about the activities carried on there,
then let's tag the activities like office=tax. 

* If it is about ownership, then we use owner=state or whatever, except
that we basically don't tag ownership on buildings and governments own
many more buildings that are not used for "civic" purposes 

* If it is about the state being the primary/sole tenant of a building,
I don't see the point in tagging that - we should be tagging the
functions or activities that are carried on within it 

//colin 

On 2016-01-10 04:14, John Willis wrote:

>> On Jan 10, 2016, at 8:01 AM, Matthijs Melissen <info at matthijsmelissen.nl> wrote:
>> 
>> To me it is not clear that this is a solution, as the definition of
>> building=public is equally vague. Is a prison a public building? A
>> band stand? A theatre? A bus depot?
> 
> A building operated by a government agency or by a private operator for the "public use" or "public good" is my take. 
> 
> But we chop this up. 
> 
> Museums. 
> City Halls
> Community Centers. 
> Sports centres
> Stadiums and arenas 
> Etc.
> 
> So having a generic definition where we all ready have more specific ones leads to catch-all - so some people throw everything in. 
> 
> Building=civic also exists, but has no accompanying land use (yet) for the vast amount of "civic administrative" centers and offices. 
> 
> If we further define these common "public" building types - true government stuff like tax and pension and immigration and other almost purely governmental facilities - not only do we get more detailed building definitions, but a landuse or two to accurately map the complexes they invariably are part of in first world nations. 
> 
> This lack of good building sets and missing landuse has, in my opinion, made most government and public offices/facilities unmappable in the current methods used by commercial/residential/industrial buildings and their complexes.  
> 
> Getting public/civic/whatever decided and fully fleshed out and a proper landuse(s) to go with it will really help bring them up to "first class citizens" - and help make a single process (landuse/building sets) work everywhere. 
> 
> When I first started - trying to map a train station in the same way as a factory or apartment complex completely flummoxed me. There were totally different rules for mapping the land and the station and everything.  
> 
> This is the same for civic office buildings - and since my mapping area (Japan) is heavily coated with government complex after government complex - being able to map them (and their functions) properly and in a consistent way to the other buildings would be appreciated. 
> 
> Javbw 
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