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

[Andy Townsend]

On 29/04/2019 17:04, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
>
>
>
> 29 Apr 2019, 17:36 by kevin.b.kenny at gmail.com:
>
>     On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 11:24 AM Mateusz Konieczny
>     <matkoniecz at tutanota.com <mailto:matkoniecz at tutanota.com>> wrote:
>
>         Why not simply call anything which is a 'large public area for
>         recreation', a park, and specify it additionally with
>         additional tags?
>
>         That would require redefining leisure=park and while would
>         match use of word "park" in USA
>         it would start mismatching use of work "park" in UK. It would
>         also start to mismatch how
>         leisure=park is used in Europe.
>
>         Generally British English is preferred in OSM and redefining
>         popular tags is deeply problematic.
>
>
>     Are we talking about the use of the *tag*, or the use of the *word* in
>     British English?
>
> It is supposed to be about both, I attempted to check both but I open 
> to discovering that I am mistaken.
> In case of British English I attempted to consult with people who are 
> native speakers of BE
> and people better in English than myself but maybe my 
> questions/examples failed to capture
> cases of what should be described park (and or leisure=park).
>
> I know that it is possible, that is part of the reason why I posted 
> quoted message (it would be embarassing
> to discover that my claims were wrong but I prefer to discover as soon 
> as possible).

With regard to British English usage, I think you're correct*. Something 
described here as a "park" would pretty much match the current 
description at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:leisure%3Dpark 
(without the urban requirement, but you've already talked about that).  
In the UK a "national park" (or something like the Pentland Hills 
Regional Park which was already mentioned) isn't really a subset of 
"park" in any way - it's something else altogether.

National Parks such as Yellowstone were established in the US many years 
ago as pretty much their own thing - they're almost nothing like parks 
such as Derby Arboretum (arguably the first public park in Britain).  In 
concept Britain's "National Parks" owe more to the American National 
Parks than they do to earlier local parks.  There are significant 
differences in how they are managed and run, but the model was borrowed 
from the US.  The fact that the "Peak District National Park" has the 
word "park" in it does not make it a "park" in the normally understood 
sense.

Turning to things in the US, there's no way that I'd describe 
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3003169/history ("Joseph D Grant 
County Park") as "more like" Derby Arboretum / Golden Gate Park than the 
Peak District National Park in England or Yosemite. Sure, it's a sliding 
scale, with most bits of Joseph D Grant significantly "less wild" than 
Yosemite, but my impression of it after having been there is "not really 
a park in the British English sense".

Obviously different communities worldwide stretch OSM tags to match 
local differences and important local distinctions that may not exist in 
the British English tag definitions (for example, apparently German 
gravel has a different name depending on whether it's sharp or rounded), 
and it's up to the US community to decide how to tag things in the US, 
but I'd suggest that substantially broadening the usage of a tag that 
means something else everywhere else is not the best approach.

Best Regards,

Andy

* for the benefit of anyone who may not know, I'm a native English 
(British) English speaker.

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