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In an area I'm mapping, there is a situation where residential and industrial landuse are separated by a ~10m wide section of land. Officially, this land is classified as "Local purpose (landscape and environment protection)".

This land is grassy and looks to be regularly mowed, with many trees.

How should this area be tagged?

asked 28 Dec '19, 11:22

Zismac's gravatar image

Zismac
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This land is grassy and looks to be regularly mowed,

If used for nothing else (eg not a landuse=recreation_ground), landuse=grass suffices. We would like to describe what's on the ground foremost. You could try tagging the official classification/purpose somehow. Perhaps designation=, if you want something more than description=.

with many trees.

Now this depends on how "many trees" there are. By the sound of your question, it doesn't seem that many, so you can leave it to the next step.

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answered 28 Dec '19, 16:52

Kovoschiz's gravatar image

Kovoschiz
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edited 28 Dec '19, 17:03

The example by @Kovoschiz demonstrates that a particular tag has radically different meanings in different parts of the world.

In the UK a recreation ground is close to a park but predominantly dedicated to pitches for team sports. It is not used to mean any area which is predominantly used for sport or leisure activities. In the US, on the contrary, the tag is used with a generic meaning (e.g., for ski areas), but also for patches of what in Britain might be described as amenity grassland or urban commons.

In the UK and elsewhere there is a tendency to use landuse=grass for this type of feature, but again substantial ambiguity exists. Both values will be rendered as areas of green, which may be adequate for your purposes, but these tags create problems for any type of analytical use of the data.

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answered 28 Dec '19, 20:05

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SK53 ♦
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He didn't specify, so I thought I stick with a more generic interpretation. "Analytical use of the data" should be done with care anyway. Is there any specific tagging for "amenity grassland or urban commons", aside from designation=?

(29 Dec '19, 09:34) Kovoschiz

Sure analytical use requires care, but it also requires contributors to be aware that there are analytical use-cases. Designation should only be used for a specific legal status, which I don't think this has (for example in England village greens can be registered with the government to convey some - limited = protections). The most significant usage of designation is to define legal access rights on various paths and tracks.

(29 Dec '19, 09:39) SK53 ♦

"which I don't think this has" but why? This official classification seems to qualify.

(29 Dec '19, 11:31) Kovoschiz

a classification does not necessarily mean something is legally distinct, for designation to work best there should be a reasonable set of assumptions which a locally-aware data consumer can apply. Most landuse classifications are for planning purposes and subject to local variation, changes in local & national planning processes.

(29 Dec '19, 17:37) SK53 ♦

Not rendered, at least by Mapnik CSS on openstreetmap.org, but I really prefer to use landcover=* for this type of situation. I may not know what the use is (ornamental, storm water filtration, recreational, etc.) but I can see the area is covered with grass or trees or scrub or . . .

Alas, since landcover is not as widely used or rendered, I end up "tagging for the render" and use landuse= in addition to my preferred landcover=.

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answered 28 Dec '19, 21:59

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n76
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More often I supplement with surface=grass first, even if I decided to adopt landcover=.

(29 Dec '19, 09:36) Kovoschiz
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question asked: 28 Dec '19, 11:22

question was seen: 1,067 times

last updated: 29 Dec '19, 17:37

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