[OSM-talk-ie] Landuse

[moltonel 3x Combo]

Landuse is a bit tricky in OSM because it has a large part of
subjectivity. The residential/retail/commercial/industrial split is a
common issue. How wide does a street need to be before we stop
including it in the landuse ? How all-encompassing should
landuse=farmland be ? Should we have lots of single-house
landuse=residential in the countryside ? What's up with landuse=forest
vs natural=wood ? Should I start using a multipolygon or stay with
shared-nodes closed-ways for now ? These existential questions explain
why landuse in OSM is just ok-ish.

FWIW, I tend to trace buildings first and landuse later (though
sometimes I lose patience). Having a landuse=residential polygon
double as a place=locality/neighbourhood is great when you can. I
stoped worrying about spliting residential/retail exactly right. For
better or worse, the townlands project is making Ireland
multipolygon-heavy, so I hesitate less than I used to about using MPs.
Most of our landuse=farmland has apparently been mapped by
single-contribution landowners and is often of poor quality, but so
far I only bother improving it when it interferes with the rest. I
adopted the POV that landuse=forest means forestry activity and
implies natural=wood when nothing else is tagged.