[OSM-talk] distinguishing urban streets from out-of-town WAS: definition of the main highway-tag

Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdreist at gmail.com
Wed Aug 5 02:27:45 BST 2009


I put this on a separate thread, as it is no more about the
_main_highway tag definition

2009/8/5 Richard Mann <richard.mann.westoxford at googlemail.com>:
> My English was perhaps unclear. The discomfort is with using the same tag
> for two quite different road types (industrial estate roads and country
> lanes). Either would be fine on their own.

> The potential problem for renderers is that there's a lot less space to
> render things in urban areas, so they benefit if lower-order roads are
> distinguishable between urban areas (so they can be narrowed or suppressed),
> and rural areas (so they can be used to help fill up the space). Abutters
> seems to offer one way of indicating to the renderer that it's within the
> urban area without creating yet another highway tag.

IMHO you have this in all highway-classes (at least streets/roads). A
primary road in town will be different from a primary road outside
town, as will be a secondary, tertiary, and practically all others (at
least in Europe). Out of town you usually won't find BE:pavements /
sidewalks, inside you will (in Europe) usually find them. In town you
will find more lanes than out of town, ...
That's IMHO not a problem, because you can see in the data if you're
in town or outside.

cheers,
Martin




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