[OSM-talk] Countries that have NOT had any imports?

[Toby Murray]

Yeah the physical spread of people out here in the middle part of the
country is pretty sparse and I think a lot of people don't quite get
that. There is a good chunk of Kansas where the population density is
5 people per square mile or less. And those 5 people have absolutely
no use for maps because they have lived there their whole lives and
know how to get from the farm to the fields and into town for church
on Sunday morning. So these areas would have *NEVER* made it into OSM
via local mappers. Ever. The best you could hope for would be armchair
mappers tracing imagery with names perhaps taken from KDOT maps. And
at that point, what's the difference between that and the TIGER
import?

So for all the problems with TIGER (mostly duplication/non-routability
at county borders and low accuracy) I think it was The Right Thing to
do, at least for this part of the country.

Toby


On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 7:16 PM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 6:47 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
>> PS: I don't think the US is going to be a wasteland in terms of OSM
>> community forever. I just think that without the TIGER import they'd have
>> less data but much more community today.
>
> I think the relative lack of OSM community in the US has more to do
> with the earlier presence of non-OSM no-cost map sites (and driving
> directions sites) covering the US.
>
> I also think treating the US as though it's a single state (e.g.
> comparing it to say Germany), is not all that useful.
>
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