[OSM-talk] Residential areas

[Richard Fairhurst]

Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote:

> My main point was that we shouldn't say things like "Map renderers  
> don't
> need this information, they can use landuse tags of the area", when  
> it's
> not only maps that might want to use our data. Our tags should aim to
> capture all the information we can easily survey and that might be
> useful, not draw a pretty map with the current renderers.

I think you've kind of misunderstood the land use argument.

Using a bit of clever geometry, any client can work out whether a  
given road is enclosed by a "land_use=residential" area. That applies  
to a route-planner, a map renderer, an UpMyStreet-like query engine,  
in fact anything using OSM data.

Tagging highway=residential is superfluous when you have land use  
tags, because you're duplicating information in the highway tag  
that's already explicit in the surrounding area. (Having it in the  
highway tag also implies you should have  
highway=residential_cycleway, highway=residential_footway, etc. etc.)

But I may sound like I care more than I actually do. :)

cheers
Richard

P.S. do we need tagging at lists.openstreetmap.org to prevent all this  
kind of stuff drowning out talk, or would that granularise things too  
much?