[Talk-us] Best practices for high-density residential areas

[Steve Friedl]

Hi all,

I’ve been doing OSM for around a month, and have been mainly focusing on my
local neighborhood in Foothill Ranch (Orange County in Southern California).
As a kind of showcase I'm going quite hyperbolic with detail, far more than
I'd do anywhere else, and it's been helpful to understand the tradeoffs of
effort vs results.

My area: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/33.6851/-117.6514 - it's the
whole set of tracts that form a "thumb" above Bake Parkway.

1) Address points –vs- house outlines?

Originally I had gone in to add points with building=house all over, but
until an address is added, they simply don't show up *at all* on OSM, so I'm
not sure that house points really help much.

Adding an address means they show up as numbers, which I think is ugly, and
this is probably all that's required for routing to work properly. I do
understand that interpolation can work by pegging the addresses at each end,
but around here when roads go around curves, there are holes in the
sequences that individual numbering fixes.

Example: all along Toulon Place (points, not outlines)

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/33.68761/-117.65302&layers=N

[it still may be rendering those tiles]

What are the thoughts on points vs outlines?

a) House outlines are really helpful, thank you
b) Outlines not necessary, the address is what matters, but knock yourself
out
c) please don't do outlines, it's clutter
d) adding all these house outlines approaches vandalism
e) something else?

2) Are rectangular house outlines good enough?

So in my area I've been making the outlines look actually like the house, as
best as I can, but there's no way I'm going to do this to every house in
America.  For other areas, assuming house outlines are warranted, I can use
the building tool in JOSM (what a *great* tool) to make strictly rectangular
outlines that vaguely approximate the shape of the house. What are the
thoughts on this?

a) A rectangular outline is great, thank you
b) It's better than nothing,  but only marginally so
c) drawing squares on non-square things is inaccurate
d) something else?

I like a lot of detail

3) Driveways?

Most houses are obviously on one street or another, but some houses are on a
corner, or are with multiple houses sharing a common driveway, so adding the
actual driveways helps make it clear how it's laid out.

Example: the houses at the north end of Calotte Place:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/33.68120/-117.64836&layers=N

But in some neighborhood I've added driveways to all the houses just for
consistency. I can see several schools of thought here:

a) you don't need driveways in residential areas at all
b) only include the driveway if it adds clarity that's not obvious
c) adding them all isn't really a good use of time, but hey, knock yourself
out
d) holy crap, this makes things way too busy, please don't
e) adding them everywhere approaches vandalism.
f) something else?

Thanks for any guidance or discussion.

Steve

--- 
Stephen J Friedl  | Security Consultant | UNIX Wizard | 714 345-4571
steve at unixwiz.net | Southern California | Windows Guy |  unixwiz.net