[OSM-talk-ie] Time to talk about landuse=residential

[Tony Furnell]

Thanks for your insights Donal, it's interesting to hear different
perspectives of residential areas. Regarding named residential areas... I
suppose in my experience. in urban areas, it's often unclear as to where
the boundary should be, so any editors that come along after the fact and
need to make changes to an existing named area could be none-the-wiser as
to how it interacts with adjacent areas (be they residential or anything
else).

A related difficulty is where a named residential area is applied to a new
development - but then within a few years, the development is extended.
Without specific local knowledge, how does one know whether the extension
is a continuation of the same named area, or whether it has been given a
new name?

I do see the merits of doing so, especially in a local context - I suppose
most of my mapping tends to be remote, or with only passing knowledge of an
area, so it makes little sense in my context to name residential areas
where I don't really know enough detail to map them correctly.

--
Tony Furnell



> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2022 22:22:29 +0100
> From: Donal Hunt <donal.hunt at gmail.com>
> To: Discussion of OpenStreetMap in Ireland <talk-ie at openstreetmap.org>
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk-ie] Time to talk about landuse=residential
> Message-ID:
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> Moyn4m4aRUg at mail.gmail.com>
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>
> Definitely a juicy topic for discussion...
>
> Two observations from my perspective (biases to be mentioned later):
>
> 1) Named residential areas
> I am an advocate for using named residential areas, especially for newer
> developments which have not become lodged in the general public's memory.
> For growing communities, the evolution of the built environment can be
> fascinating and we have a means of capturing data that will be of interest
> in future decades.
>
> I recently mapped Whitechurch, Co. Cork to quite a high level of detail and
> using named residential areas was actually quite helpful for showing how
> the village has evolved over time. It's also helpful for wayfinding because
> even locals aren't familiar with the road names / estates that have been
> developed.
>
> For long established residential areas, it probably doesn't make as much
> sense but there may still be historical value in detailing out the phases
> of suburbs as they grew. Crumlin and Drimnagh specifically have evolved
> over many decades with a number of different developers.
>
> 2) Guidance for mappers is always welcome
>
> Guidance for mappers, coders, etc are always a great idea to ensure
> consistency and set expectations. I'm a fan of "just enough structure" to
> ensure forward momentum and robustness. As someone who has encountered the
> situation of "the boundary follows the stream but now the stream has moved"
> a number of times, it can be painful to unpick boundaries from other ways
> when the ways themselves have changed.
>
> In addition, since I tend to map more rural areas, deciding where to draw
> the line around a residential area can be ambiguous at times. Should it
> span both sides of a rural road? What if there are gaps? etc I do have a
> closet interest in the data being usable in the future for identifying
> residential clusters. I have a strong opinion that all new housing should
> be in villages / towns and if there is a very real need to not build there
> (I don't agree with many of the reasons currently allowed), build it within
> an existing cluster at the very least. It breaks my heart to continue
> seeing 1-off housing in the middle of nowhere and the residents then
> complaining about services.
>
> Biases:
>  - I live in the countryside (in a cluster of houses)
>  - Named residential areas are great!
>  - I live in Cork boi.
>  - The worst thing is often to do nothing at all...
>
> Hope there is something useful in there.
>
> Donal
>
>
> On Sun, 3 Apr 2022 at 14:44, Ciar?n Staunton <ciaran.staunton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I want to say a couple of things as context, so there will be no
> > misunderstandings about what I want to touch on. This conversation keeps
> > nearly happening on Telegram, but might work better here.
> > 1. When it comes to landuses I realise there are several types, but my
> eye
> > is drawn to landuse=residential simply because there are a number of us
> > adding/editing these using very different styles. The intention is not to
> > disrespect any particular style, but hopefully to have a bit of a think
> > about better and best ways to handle adding or editing a residential
> > landuse.
> > 2. My observations are mainly drawn from suburban North Dublin, but I
> have
> > been mapping recently also in Tipperary, Donegal, Derry, and Kildare. But
> > please note the slightly urban bias.
> > 3. I have not quantified anything, but I want  to mention some examples
> if
> > that can be tolerated.
> > 4. It is not my expectation that the map will be entirely consistent nor
> > inconsistent. I do imagine that we should be talking and coaching each
> > other more about how to be more consistent.
> >
> > Some residential landuses are enormous, they are literally the whole town
> > or whole village, they take in (without much nuance) half pieces of
> fields,
> > rivers, the sea, forests and woods. They were drawn quickly I would say,
> > with the intention of adding finesse at a later stage, the problem is
> > nobody has added that finesse in a lot of cases.
> >
> > At what can literally be the heart of such residential landuses, the
> > commerical centre and indusrial clusters can be incoporated without any
> > relational segregation, and potentially all other little types of
> landuses,
> > shopping and civic areas and so forth. I know there is a tolerance of
> > parking and greens being "secondary" landuses within a residential
> landuse,
> > but I also see these segregated in other countries.The towns of southern
> > Kildare bear a lot of examples of this, but frankly it is ubiquitous.
> >
> > Taking a different approach to the above entirely and you see an effort
> to
> > draw long, linear and jagged polygons along roadways, to join together
> > ribbon developments in a single and improbable residential area, which
> > obviously bears no name and stretches from Bundoran to the Fermanagh
> > border.
> >
> > Even in urban Dublin several suburbs could be lumped together into a
> large
> > residential landuse - see Clontarf may has eaten away what most people
> call
> > Raheny - or there could be micro detail of mapping out individual
> > developments which are simply driven by the similarity of thoroughfare
> name
> > - see Ramleh near Clonskeagh. It goes without saying that some
> residential
> > landuses are named, while others are not.
> >
> > When these areas are drawn there are even different micro approaches to
> how
> > to create their edge. In Finglas and Ballymun someone went around and
> > joined the residential landuses to each other and the centre of
> highways. I
> > don't like this myself as any adjustment to any feature means all the
> other
> > features could be altered in unintended ways. Add into this stew the
> > joining of the residential areas to townlands, or other boundaries and
> > there starts to be complicated relational problems if anyone has a mind
> to
> > fix any of the individual elements. Literally beside those two areas in
> > Glanevin there is a complete avoidance of these admixtures of connected
> > nodes, with transport corridors avoided altogether, but 'internal'
> > residential roads included.
> >
> > I'm very interested to hear what others think about this, and how we can
> do
> > more to iron out these issues.
> >
>