[OSM-talk] Not attaching polygons to roads

[Bryce Nesbitt]

On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 10:57 AM, Janko Mihelić <janjko at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think we can divide features to virtual and physical features.
>
> Virtual: highway centerlines, waterway centerlines, administrative
> borders, industrial and residental landuse, parks
> Physical: riverbanks, buildings, meadows, forests, farm fields
>
> Can we make a rule to never share points between these two groups?
>

-1. I don't think that grouping is correct.

First, centerlines model a physical feature.
Second, what you list as physical features are in fact mostly human land
uses.  Meadows/forests and even riverbanks are constructed and constrained
by man.

--
Forests and farm field typically abut roads (you may have forest on one
side, farm on the other, at the moment).
If the road is ever expanded, it will take land from the abutting use.

Similarly for a residential land use with a retail land use across the
street: there's a dividing line and it's the street.  If the road
department ever moves the street a few meters, the street will still be the
dividing line.

Until you get to a level of micromapping that
currently covers less than 1% of the planet, the road serves remarkably
well as the dividing line.  There is no "gap"
on the ground between the forest and the road: at a first level of mapping
they abut.

---
Perhaps if the editors rendered centerlines with width people would get
less uptight about using them
as boundaries.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20140227/c765a21a/attachment.html>