[Talk-GB] Still too many universities in Cambridge

[SK53]

Funnily enough this long-standing issue came up at our pub meeting last
month. Although my reaction has always been to let sleeping dogs lie, this
was clearly not the consensus.

I've sent a message to University of Cambridge Information Services who run
the map.cam.ac.uk site which consumes the OSM data, to warn them that a
change is impending. It's probably worth holding off for a week or so to
allow them to assess any impact on their map. Incidentally, knowing a
specific contact point would help as university IT departments can be big
beasts these days. It does show that having a good contact point is always
a good idea for directed edits when data is in use.

As others have said there is a lot of inconsistency: particular with former
houses taken into University or College ownership which sometimes get
building=house/semi and other times building=university. There are other
college buildings of this type which are not hit by amenity=university at
all.

Other general points I noticed relating to  inconsistency/issues (largely
arising because Cambridge got mapped earlier than many places or it just
has a lot of things which are otherwise rare):

   - Theological Colleges are loosely associated with the university, and
   are equally loosely amenity=university in their own right. I don't know if
   we have a regular way of tagging non-degree awarding religious training
   centres. These are something of an Oxbridge speciality. I see the London
   Institute of Theology is tagged
   <https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/524375396> as a college. Years ago I
   mapped Coleg Trefecca as a conference centre, but used old_ tags to
   indicate it's historical role as a college training people for the
   ministry. Fortunately some of the odder places
   <https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/53.18591/-3.02706> of former
   times have similarly changed their roles.
   - Sports facilities (especially isolated playing fields and boathouses)
   are just tagged with a ref and operator. Pavilions are often tagged
   building=university, as is the sports centre.
   - Cambridge colleges are independent corporations in their own right, so
   probably should have separate amenity=university relations (although the
   world is unlikely to end if not). They mostly form discrete campuses.
   Isolated parts are named separately so just replacing these with a relation
   doesn't work. North Court, Emma is one such example. There are similarly
   very well known parts of the university with their own widely used names:
   Downing Site, New Museums, West Cambridge etc. This is true of most
   universities now that many are multi-campus. I don't think we have a good
   approach to these: roles in relations, campus_name … are all possibilities.
   (This also applies to schools now that one academy can take over another).
   - There's plenty of (non-public accessible) student accommodation which
   is not mapped as such. I presume this is intentional. Examples the Trinity
   staircase above the bike shop on Jesus Lane, most of Lower Park St (Jesus),
   and Portugal Place,
   -  Multiple buildings mapped as one
   <https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/147487988>. There are probably
   others, but this one I know. The larger part of the building is the
former Cambridgeshire
   County Hall
   <https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101265198-county-hall-cambridge#.Xjr8Fm52u01>,
   built around 1910 and Grade II listed, the S part is a 17th century house
   <https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101332167-christs-college-x-staircase-cambridge-market-ward#.Xjr7yG52u00>
   (formerly 'X' staircase), also Grade II. The two buildings form a single
   unit of student accommodation which presumably reflects the mapping.

Cheers,

Jerry




On Tue, 4 Feb 2020 at 15:15, Dave F via Talk-GB <talk-gb at openstreetmap.org>
wrote:

> On 04/02/2020 14:28, Dan S wrote:
> > Hi Dave,
> >
> > I agree with what you suggest. Can we be a bit precise though about
> > what you propose? You're proposing to remove amenity=university from
> > building=university in Cambridge, and make no other tagging changes?
>
> That's correct. I'm going to load the 1050 return by this overpass query
> into JOSM:
> [bbox:{{bbox}}];
> nwr[amenity=university][building=university];
> out meta geom;
>
> plus another 7 which are still tagged as building=yes.
>
> > (Ironically, the current tagging makes it hard for me to search to see
> > if there's a "proper" amenity=university in there somewhere, e.g. as a
> > relation or area covering a large swathe of them.)
>
> There isn't, I'm afraid.. it's a right hotchpotch
>
> https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/QnH
>
> These are the remaining 117 amenity=university which will need to be
> rectified at a later date..
>
> Cheers
> DaveF
> > Op di 4 feb. 2020 om 14:15 schreef Dave F via Talk-GB
> > <talk-gb at openstreetmap.org>:
> >> Hi
> >> There was a discussion 5 years ago. There may have been others.
> >> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2015-May/017455.html
> >>
> >> Many amenity=university tags were added unnecessarily to building=yes
> >> A contributor had converted these to building=university, in accordance
> >> with the wiki.
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:building%3Duniversity
> >>
> >> https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/40649767
> >> This allows the removal of the amenity tags without loss of data.
> >>
> >> The user who created his disparate tagging schema has had plenty of time
> >> to rectify.  I think this should be performed now.
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Talk-GB mailing list
> >> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
> >> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>
>
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