[OSM-talk] Proper use of landuse=residential ?

[Andy Allan]

On 10/17/07, Ted Mielczarek <ted.mielczarek at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking to fill out my map, so I've started adding landuse tagged
> areas.  I've added a bunch of landuse=residential areas[1], and now
> that I look at it, I wonder if it isn't smarter to just make several
> large landuse=residential areas, and set them at layer=-1.  Is there a
> consensus on which is preferred?

If you mean setting them as layer=-1 so that a smaller
landuse=somethingelse area renders and obscures the residential area,
then it's not preferred to do it this way. You can use
polygons-with-holes* if it's mostly residential with little gaps. That
way, for a given coordinate, you can use standard polygon intersection
tests to tell what landuse areas it's in the middle of. Two
overlapping landuse areas should show that a given location has mixed
use - e.g. commercial overlapped with residential perhaps shows houses
above shops.

Also, layer= should be kept for things that are physically above or
below one another. So landuse=residential, layer=-1 shows some kind of
underground habitation!

Cheers,
Andy

*Don't ask me how this works in the new 0.5 world - haven't tried
mapping anything like this recently!