[Talk-us] Parks in the USA, leisure=park, park:type

[Greg Troxel]

OSM Volunteer stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> writes:

> I'll try to be brief, but there's a decade of history.  The
> leisure=park wiki recently improved to better state it means "an
> urban/municipal" park, while boundary=national_park (or perhaps
> leisure=nature_reserve, maybe boundary=protected_area) works on large,
> national (and state or provincial in North America) parks.  As the
> sharper wiki focus means a "city_park" (a sometimes-found park:type
> value, I've written brand new wiki on park:type) certainly qualifies
> as a leisure=park, this leaves county_parks (and their ilk, like
> county_beaches) in a quirky "how best do we tag these now?" quandary.

I think Kevin has it right that we should tag primarily by something
about land use, not by owne/operator, although it's fine to tag
operator.

I think the entire "national_park" tag is unfortunate, as it wraps up a
lot of concepts that vary by country, and makes people understand things
when they don't.  In the US, it should mean "preserve the land while
allowing access and enjoyment", there is a notion that the place is
relatively distinguished, and it doesn't really have a connotation of
size.

While "urban/municpal park" and "(USish) national park" are two things,
there is another kind of thing, which I label conservation land,
typically not so urban, and not wilderness.

Around me, there are a number of places, some tens of acres, some
hundreds, where there are dirt hiking trails, some blazes, and some
crude parking areas, and that's about it.  If anything, these are
closest to US national parks in concept, except that preserving the land
is a higher priority than allowing human enjoyment.  I tag them
as landuse=conservation leisure=nature_reserve.

> I can see tag leisure=park persisting on a lot of county_parks for
> some time (forever?), yet it seems OSM's worldwide view of "park"
> excludes them (and we tag boundary=national_park on state and national
> parks).

I don't understand this.

As I see it OSM's "park" is about an area that is relatively manicured
and taken care of, certainly green compared to pavement, but not really
in a natural state.  As in: if all the humans walked away and you came
back 10 or 20 years later, how different would it be?  A city park would
look totally different, and the semirural conservation areas would look
much the same except the trails would be indistinct and have trees
fallen across them.


I would expect US counties to have both city parks (think Central Park
in NY) and things that are almost wilderness areas or wildlife refuges,
plus everything in between.  I don't see level8 vs level6 management as
important (or even level4 or level2).