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

[Greg Troxel]

One of the things that has come up is "mixed-use parks", where an area
is not clearly one thing or the other.  I see two kinds of cases (with
of course a blurry line between the cases).

One case is an area where there are two kinds of uses close together, in
a way that's hard to draw a sensible line.  More "this place is both"
than "there are two places near each other treated as the same name".
Consider a smallish area that is both leisure=park and
leisure=recreation_ground.  Assume there is some grass with paved paths,
perhaps some flowers, a few trees, and an area with picnic tables,
perhaps with some roofs, and some charcoal grills.  That's clearly
leisure=park.  Then add a pond with swimming and a bath house for
changing.  Or two soccer fields.  Those by themselves are
leisure=recreation_ground.  Assume that this area is one parcel, managed
as one entity, and named as one thing by the owning body.  So how to tag
it?  Here, I would argue that one should simply look the more
significant use, and pick that and don't worry.  I would lean to park
when on the park/recreation_ground line, because the sports fields will
be tagged as pitches, and once those are there, they are rendered and
findable, regardless of the overall area being tagged as
recreation_ground.

The other case is a large area with subareas that are each clearly one
or the other.  Consider:

  1000 acre parcel, almost entirely forest in a natural state, with dirt
  hiking paths

  a 40 acre sub-piece of this on the edge, that is different:
    - paved parking lot
    - visitor center / bathroom building
    - grass and a few trees (city park like)
    - picnic tables, grills

  probably there are different rules for the two pieces.  Dogs might be
  allowed in the 40-acre chunk, but not in the larger forest, for
  example.

  the entire thing is called "Foo State Park", owned by a state
  government.  Legally it is one parcel, and run by the same state
  agency.

I think the basic issue is that we tend to focus on the larger
definition of area and think we must give it one tag, so we frame the
question: "Is this 1000 acre place a =park or a =nature_reserve?".
Stepping back, I see a park and a nature_reserve as separate and related
things.

So, I'd be in favor of having a way on the parcel boundary, and another
denoting the park-type sub-piece, calling those outer and inner and
tagging:

 outer: name="Foo State Park"
 inner: leisure=park
 relation wtih outer/inner: leisure=nature_reserve

Or, perhaps not having a relation and putting leisure=nature_reserve on
the outer, with the expectation that renderers/etc. will resolve the
overapping landuse to the smaller geometry.

(As I see it this applies to many National Parks too, but we don't worry
about that because we just call them national_park.)