[OSM-talk] Landuse areas etc. abutting highways

[James Livingston]

On 05/10/2009, at 8:18 PM, Marc Schütz wrote:
> IMO (a) is the correct way to do this.
  ...
> For a road, we can either choose to map it as a linear object (this  
> is the common case), or we can map its geometry more exactly by  
> using an area. In both cases, however, the object in our database  
> represents the entire road (i.e. not only the middle line). Because  
> in reality, there is no gap between the road and the areas next to  
> it, there shouldn't be one in the database either.

I agree with this, for things like landuse (which is what is mentioned  
in the topic) where the road is represented by a way. A residential  
area or farming area abuts the road reserve, so the polygon should  
abut the road's area or way.

If you're actually mapping the road and not the road reserve, so  
putting things like footpaths as separate ways, you obviously wouldn't  
want to have the landuse cover those, but for just a single way it  
makes sense.