[OSM-talk] Mapping everything as areas

[Anthony]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 4:59 PM, Roy Wallace <waldo000000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not convinced that, say, a road should be mapped as *both* a way
> and an area - I don't see any need for that.

If the road doesn't have a constant width you basically need an area.
Now, how are you going to indicate a direction of travel on an area?
I guess you could come up with some way to do it, but you'd basically
be defining a way.

> That said, in reality, features that are 2D *are* areas, and should
> *eventually* be mapped as such in OSM. But I don't think there's any
> rush. Using ways with width=* is a good, quick, interim solution.
> Where you have the time, sure, go ahead and map areas.

I agree.  Even if you just map the area and don't put any tags on it
(or put note=some textual description of what you just mapped).

> I do think we will need some more discussion and documentation about
> mapping areas - remember the debate about that keeps coming up, about
> whether adjacent areas should share nodes?

I didn't know that was up for debate.  I thought the consensus was
that they should not only share nodes, but they should share ways as
well.