[Talk-GB] Town Greens

[nathan case]

Thanks, I’d ruled out village green because of the Wiki description: “a distinctive area of grassy public land in a village centre”. This is not that. In fact using that tag in that way is listed under “incorrect use”.

But maybe the legal status overrules the Wiki description!

From: Colin Smale <colin.smale at xs4all.nl>
Sent: Friday, April 3, 2020 12:03 PM
To: talk-gb at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Town Greens


Considering that it is legally and functionally the same as a Village Green, I would say use the same tag i.e. landuse=village_green. It may be *called* a town green because it belongs to a settlement that is a town (who decides that is a whole other discussion) and/or has a Town Council (which is, again, legally and functionally the same as a Parish Council with the addition of a Town Mayor).

Village greens, town greens, designated commons etc all suffer from the same problem in OSM: they have a certain legal status, but both the landuse to which they are actually put, and the landcover (grass etc), vary. So actually landuse=village_green is a misclassification in the taxonomy because it is not (always or by definition) "the use to which the land is put".




On 2020-04-03 12:48, nathan case wrote:
Hi all,

I made a recent edit to a local area that has recently been designated a “Town Green”.

Edit: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/82973329
News: https://www.lancasterguardian.co.uk/news/lancasters-freemans-wood-looks-set-become-town-green-after-eight-year-battle-1357617

For those that are unfamiliar with a Town Green – it is, legally, the same as a village green. It is a legally protected area of land that is for the enjoyment of the public (Commons Act 2006 and the Commons Registration Act 1965).

But I ran into some problems mapping it.

The “village green” landuse tag doesn’t seem appropriate (as it doesn’t fit the characterises described) – despite being legally the same.
Park and/or recreation landuse tags don’t seem appropriate either – it isn’t either of those, despite the leisure connotations the land holds.
Nature reserve didn’t seem appropriate as, although the land is now protected, it isn’t formally a reserve.

So I’ve opted for the boundary=protected_area schema. From the protect_class options, 21 seemed like the most relevant: “Community life: religious, sacred areas, associative locations, recreation”.

Unfortunately, this now means the land (specifically its boundary and name) is not being rendered. Of course I know not to tag for the renderer but I wanted to check the validity of my approach.

Is there an agreed upon approach for town greens in the UK? Is there anything I could do, within the correct schema, to show this important local area on the default map?

Cheers!




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