[OSM-talk] best way to map large areas

[Robin Paulson]

On 30/11/2007, Andy Allan <gravitystorm at gmail.com> wrote:
> > that was the way i originally considered, but then i found that
> > smaller areas will render on top of a larger one. i was going to
> > create a large residential area covering a big part of the city, and
> > then drop retail and industrial areas, aprks, schools, etc. (all
> > smaller than the residential area) on top of that. a lot less fiddly
> > to make
>
> You can't really do it that way*. A given point should only lie within
> the boundaries of whichever landuse areas are appropriate - so if it's
> purely industrial, it shouldn't lie within a (larger) residential
> area. Generally the main ones that make sense are overlapping
> commercial and residential, to show that there are shops and housing
> at the same coordinates.

ok, that sounds reasonable - i had assumed the renderer would subtract
one are from the other, to leave an area with a hole in it, and a
smaller area filling that hole (does it do that?)

taking your point to it's extreme: how can there be shops and houses
at the same point? i generally try to make my landuse areas as precise
and accurate as possible, so small areas of shops get a small area,
which exactly matches the extremity of the block of shops. if there
are a few houses amongst a block of shops, they gets their own area,
no matter how small