[Tagging] Wrong use of landuse=village_green - but what else to use?

[Tod Fitch]

> On Jan 8, 2017, at 10:59 AM, Marc Zoutendijk <marczoutendijk at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Some mappers use landuse=village_green to tag those spots on the map that are combinations of grass, plants, bushes, flowers and sometimes a few small trees.
> The size can vary between 1m2 to maybe 100m2-500m2. 
> Areas like those are usually maintained bij the municipality and are used as a means to improve the environment of the inhabitants of a village or city. 
> They are not to be confused with a garden or a park, because those usually have some sort of fence or wall around them, they can have a name and they have an entrance.
> In the Dutch community we are now seeking for a proper tagging for this kind of landuse that consists of various other landuses (forest, grass and others) mixed together.
> 
> The (mis)use of village_green for the landuse like what I described above, stems mainly from a misunderstanding of the typical English definition and use of the village_green as described in the wiki. [1] 
> Not being from Great Britain, I don't understand it either! Some people argue that landuse=village_green cannot exist outside of Great Britain because of its special, legal, status.
> 
> One of the proposals for this (mixed) type of landuse is “municipality_green” or "municipality_vegetation", and before we continue with its use, I would like to learn what kind of discussions have been had before about tagging this kind of landuse. 
> I read various discussions on the German forum and started one in the Dutch forum [2], but could not find anything recently in the tagging archives. Anyone who knows (something) better?
> 
> 
> Marc
> 
> [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:landuse%3Dvillage_green <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:landuse=village_green>
> [2] https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=56899 <https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=56899>
> 

Based on usage in the United States, it sure sounds like leisure=park is the tag to use for what you are describing. I see nothing in the wiki page [1] for park that indicates it must be a minimum size, have a wall, a discrete entrance or that it has to have a name.  There are a lot of areas local to me called parks, that are tagged with leisure=park and which do not have fences/walls/or gates. And some of the smaller ones (colloquially called “mini-parks”) don’t seem to have names either.

FWIW, it sounds like the New England town or village “commons” was based on the concept of “village green” stated in the wiki. Since I’ve never lived in New England, I am not sure how those commons are treated under current law and custom.

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:leisure%3Dpark


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