[Tagging] Lyft and nameless sectioning in OSM

[Minh Nguyen]

Vào lúc 05:45 2022-10-15, Greg Troxel đã viết:
> 
> Warin <61sundowner at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> OSM does not map illegal activity.
> 
> Taken to the extreme, perhaps, but we are talking about things that are
> done in the open and clearly visible to all.  Landuse, by its nature,
> occurs on timescales of months or longer.  It is obvious that the
> authorities are just as aware of landuse as a local mapper.
> 
> Applied to this discussion, the concept of declining to map landuses
> that are contrary to zoning is totally ridiculous.  Just in case you
> aren't trolling, I'll substantively reply.
> 
> Landuse issues in the US are civil not criminal, and I suspect that's
> similar in many places.  The edges of what is permissible under zoning,
> or under contractual land use rules, is fuzzy, and difficult to figure
> out, even for people that understand the zoning rules.

To demonstrate that this isn't merely a consequence of U.S. law or the 
federal system, consider that OSM is a key source of information about 
informal settlements -- favelas in Brazil, Kibera in Kenya, colonias 
along the Mexico-U.S. border, and countless other examples -- that might 
be described as "illegal" from a certain point of view but which clearly 
meet this project's verifiability standard. This information belongs on 
the map.

There's also the issue of desire paths and informal trails, which in 
some cases represent an accumulation of unauthorized activity. Yet we 
have a well-used informal=* key, and there's even discussion among the 
U.S. community about affirmatively indicating non-informal trails to 
better clarify this distinction.

The actual reason we don't "map zoning" is that we don't aim to copy any 
planning or zoning map verbatim. OSM aims to map the present as opposed 
to (sometimes aspirational) plans about the future. A zoning map by its 
nature describes what kind of construction project will be approved 
going forward, while acknowledging that existing landuse may differ. We 
don't have a tag to say "residential landuse but all these retail 
buildings got grandfathered in". Unfortunately, people regularly come to 
OSM and naïvely copy their local zoning map without regard for this 
distinction, because it's often the only readily accessible landuse-like 
map available from the local authorities.

Another reason, possibly specific to the U.S., is that typical zoning 
terminology doesn't line up with OSM landuse terminology. For example, a 
"commercial" zone might consist of retail storefronts, and a "light 
industrial" zone might consist of warehouses, parking lots, and tire 
stores. An inexperienced mapper copying off the zoning map would tag 
these areas as landuse=commercial and landuse=industrial, respectively. 
On the other hand, if a landuse=residential area happens to line up with 
an area labeled "heavy industrial" on a zoning map, it's worth 
double-checking whether our data is erroneous or outdated.

-- 
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us