[Tagging] Areas around doctors/dentists - or any other amenity

[Jeroen Hoek]

This is a good question which points at an area of unresolved issues
regarding (implied) landuse.

If you look at something large like an amenity=hospital, it can be said
that this when mapped as the area representing the grounds implies a
certain type of landuse (I would say 'healthcare'). Because large
hospitals are often mapped thus, there is no need for an explicit
landuse-tag here; it is implied.

So if you take a well-mapped city and look at its explicit landuse
(i.e., landuse=residential/retail/commercial/industrial) and implicit
landuse (e.g., leisure=park, amenity=hospital, etc.) you get a pretty
complete picture of the division and use of the built-up area of such a
place.

More recently, we've seen some amenities gain their respective explicit
landuses: amenity=place_of_worship has landuse=religious, and
amenity=school|college|university etc. have landuse=education. So anyone
interested in showing how much area of a place is dedicated to, say,
education can take the union of amenity=school|college|university and
landuse=education areas.

With amenity=doctors and healthcare=* this feature is missing (although
some people are already using tags like landuse=health|healthcare). I've
found this frustrating when you have a building with dedicated parking
etc. which houses a number of healthcare providers, such as general
practitioners, apothecaries, and physiotherapists. Similar to how
landuse=education can be used to represent an area (potentially with its
own identity and name) within which multiple schools share the campus
and/or buildings, it would be nice to have some landuse=healthcare for
these kind of healthcare-related amenities.

In return to your question: yes, it seems sensible that similar to other
amenities, amenity=dentist|doctors can be used to map the grounds
(especially if these are larger and obviously dedicated to that
purpose). At least, where the area is used by just one such amenity.

For the multiple healthcare amenities sharing an area scenario (very
common in the Netherlands), I would support introducing a landuse-tag in
a similar vein to landuse=religious and landuse=education.


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