[OSM-talk] Unique Map Uses

[Brett Henderson]

Hi All,

I'm putting together a presentation on OSM for work.  I'm pitching the 
creation and use of maps in Africa.

One thing I'm interested in is some unconventional uses of maps.  I'd 
like to show how the community driven approach allows OSM maps to be 
differentiated from more commercial offerings such as Google Maps by 
focusing on things of interest to specific communities.  We typically 
focus on roads with a secondary focus on other things we encounter along 
the way.  Given that mapping in some regions of Africa may place more 
emphasis on other features (water wells and hospitals for example), I'm 
wondering if we have any map locations rich in non-road content.  I can 
simply zoom in on a section of London to show examples of the detail 
that can be entered but I'm hoping there's something more unusual or 
unique out there.

Some examples may be a well mapped ski field, a mountain covered in 
mountain bike trails, orienteering courses, etc.  A great example would 
be somewhere where the main method of navigation/routing is by landmarks 
where roads are secondary.  In other words a node and area rich map as 
opposed to way rich would be very interesting.

As an aside, I've already included Kinshasa, Congo as an example of what 
OSM can achieve in Africa.  Does anybody know who's generating this 
content?  I tried downloading a portion of the Kinshasa area in JOSM and 
the total of non-anonymous editing was 4 objects versus 9125 anonymous 
objects.

Cheers,
Brett