[OSM-talk] Overlapping Ways - Embrace or Avoid?

[mail at s-holst.de]

Hi,

consider the following scenario:

A residential area is bordered by a road.

Typically I find two approaches in the OSM data set:

1. The area shares some nodes with the highway, creating overlapping ways.
2. The area shares no nodes and was drawn as close as possible to the road.

I couldn't find any recommendations in the wiki on which option to prefer.

Overlapping ways allow a cleaner data model and saves nodes. But editing such ways is quite a hassle. There is currently no function to split nodes so that ways can be separated again. So if the border of the area needs to be changed, the complete area has to be redrawn (at least to my knowledge).

Best regards

Stefan (coomba)