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

[Joseph Eisenberg]

I would recommend starting to use boundary=protected_area for State
parks, and other parks that are large natural areas that are designed
for a balance of tourism and protection of the natural environment but
are not actually National Parks.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dprotected_area

You can tag state parks like this:

boundary=protected_area + protect_class=2 + protection_title="State Park"

Protect Class 2 is the same type as National Parks, and will be
rendered and interpreted the same by most database users, but the
protection title makes it clear that it's actually a State Park, not a
National Park.

For county parks: many of these are small parks that are similar to a
usual urban park, with gardens, playgrounds, sports fields etc, and
can be tagged with leisure=park. Others are natural areas or nature
reserves, and could use boundary=protected_area + protect_class=5 +
protection_title="County Park".

State and National Forests, which are used for logging and grazing as
well as recreation, can be tagged as:
boundary=protected_area + protect_class=6 + protection_title="National
Forest" or "State Forest".

These features will all be rendered the same as boundary=national_park
and leisure=nature_reserve in many renderings styles, but it's nice to
be a little more specific.