[Talk-GB] Tagging showgrounds

[Mark Goodge]

On 24/02/2020 11:34, Brian Prangle wrote:
> This is a case where landcover and landuse get confused in the OSM 
> scheme of things. Yes it's grass but that's not its use. Its use is 
> commercial : the  space is rented commercially to exhibitors who sell 
> goods to attendees who pay an entrance fee, with a semi-cultural event 
> attached. 

The wiki describes commercial as:

"Use tag landuse=commercial to delineate areas of land used for 
commercial purposes. Commercial landuse mainly deals with services and 
trade (tertiary sector).

Such area may consist of offices, administration, laboratories, 
logistics, hotels, car repair stations, and associated infrastructure 
(car parks, service roads, lawns and so-on). Compared to industrial 
landuse (landuse=industrial) no goods are produced."

A showground doesn't fit that description. Sure, it's commercial in the 
sense that it generates revenue. But then, so does forestry and 
agricultural land. And the trade stand aspect of a county show is 
secondary to the primary use, even though, these days, it's the use 
which sustains the event financially.

>I'm not sure about access rights during times when there is no 
> event , but I suspect it's private, so an open space justification might 
> not be appropriate.

Yes; that's why I'm less happy with park or recreation_ground; as these 
tend to imply public access. I don't think they're necessarily wrong, 
and a ground which gets a lot of year-round use as well as its main show 
could well qualify as a recreation_ground. I think that's probably true 
of the East of England Showground, for example.

Given that we don't have a dedicated landuse=showground tag, I think 
that grass or recreation_ground are normally the best alternatives, and 
maybe sometimes park. None of them are precisely right for that kind of 
usage, but they're less wrong than some of the other alternatives such 
as commercial.

Mark