I hope I’m not asking a repeat question here, but I have searched through the wiki and multiple forums for an adequate answer and not found anything fitting.
Context: there is a building in my city which should be a fairly important tourist attraction (for the history-inclined). It is however in disrepair and has been closed for “renovations” for nearly 2 years, with no indication when or if this state will change.
What is the appropriate way to tag this building without disrupting the existing data?
Any use of the construction=* tag implies something new being built. That is it not. How do we tag such a building? it is wrapped in scaffolding, to the person on the ground it is obviously a construction site, but I can’t work out how to reflect this in the osm data.
This is not an uncommon occurrence in EU (old buildings closed for repair), and I am puzzled that I have so much trouble finding a clear solution. Have I overlooked something obvious?
From your description I understand that the building has not been broken down for complete reconstruction, so it is still the same building as before.
Imo it is not necessary to change the tagging but if you like you can add a note that this building is under complete renovation and add the start date and the foreseen end date of the works as far as available.
Another option would be to tag the building with a lifecycle prefix temporarily as disused:building=* because as long as it is under complete renovation it is not possible to use the building, whatever the foreseen use may have been.
I personally would use option 1 and just add a note.
If it’s a point-of-interest that people would expect to be normally open (or at least open during some sort of “business hours”), but is actually closed indefinitely (but not necessarily permanently), I think that you might just be looking for opening_hours=closed though I don’t know what data consumers would look for and present that to users in a friendly way.
I’m interested why/how you came to this conclusion, and would like to make the case that this is actually the right tag to use.
My personal interest being I’ve ran into a similar issue and actually found that construction seemed perfectly applicable. So if I was wrong, I would like to correct that with the right way of tagging to.
Sounds good so far, doesn’t rule out existing features being renovated. It does mention something like that further down:
While this does advice not to use construction= for existing items that are under construction for a short period of time (defined as shorter then six months), this implies that it is perfectly suitable for existing items under construction longer then that.
Given the longevity of the closure already in your example (and the lack of clarity when it’ll end), I say that would be perfectly fine (as it did seemed for mine).
Use building=construction to identify a building that is currently under construction.
Again, nowhere on the page is it limited to newly to be erected buildings of any kind.
So all in all, I came to the conclusion that construction was actually the right tag to use, and I’m curious to learn why you found otherwise.
NB. Obviously not saying other (additional) tagging indicating that the POI is closed, as suggested above, is not necessary. Just that applying the construction-tag to an existing building wouldn’t be wrong in my opinion.
A building which is renovated without the structure being rebuilt is not “under construction” but “under renovation” and is does not matter how long these renovation works go on imo. That is why I agree to @TangledRockets that “construction” does not fit here.
I do not see a problem here. building=church without any building:use=* tag means it is a church being used as a church. building=church + building:use=museum means it was built as church but now is used as a museum. disused:building=church means it is a church but cannot be used as such at all at the time being - in the given case due to extensive renovation works.
I do not see the problem here. disused:building=* is in accordance with the wiki saying
Not currently in use, but could be reinstated easily.
whereas in the given case reinstation is actually performed and as soon as the necessary works are done the building will be free to be used again.
Nevertheless tagging the building as disused would not be my own choice anyhow - I would just add a note + the start and end date of the works as stated already in post #2.
Thanks @Map_HeRo, and thanks for all the replies. It’s quite validating to see my own backwards and forwards over this question reflected in the responses here.
Map_HeRo, adding start/end dates would be a potential solution - however in this case they remain unknown.
H4N5-antw, access=no is a good suggestion, thanks.
PeterCooperJr, thanks for the confirmation, opening_hours=closed I have already added for want of something more descriptive.
roelant, You’re right, the wiki does not explicitly say that construction=* is for new buildings/etc, however every example presented and every description of the tag (and associated tags) revolves around new entities - something that does not exist yet, but will soon. Without an example of a construction=renovation (or similar) tag being used, I didn’t feel right adding a new meaning to an existing tag.
@Mateusz_Konieczny I agree with you on the lifecycle prefixes - having briefly read the wiki page I am still not entirely clear on their purpose, but they do seem to undermine the tagging structure hierarchy.
I think I will tag it so:
building=<building_type>
building:use=renovation
opening_hours=closed
check_date=<6 months>
I couldn’t find any mention of building:use=renovation on the wiki, but the page was very short. Is there a tool somewhere to look up the statistics of tag usage? I know some tag pages in the wiki list the current usage stats for various values, but not always.
It would be nice to see what kind of object or building it is. Perhaps you can just mark attributes like tourism=attraction, opening times or similar as closed and leave the building as it is. So don’t put disused, construction or similar on the building.
That’s a personal distinction you’re making, and a very subjective one. The line between when something is a “construction” and when something’s a “renovation” is blurry at best and again: subjective. Unless the fact that I’m not native English is tripping me up here.
For instance, when using your definition of “the structure needs to be rebuild for it to be construction”: does a work in progress need to touch the structure of the entire building, or does it also count if it’s one floor’s structure being rebuild? Or if not: maybe “more then half”? What if someone gutted an entire building, but leaves the structure itself untouched? Are we actually talking outer or inner structure? And if outer: does just replacing the window frames (which are part of the structure) count as a renovation or a construction?
I’ve seen an entire factory getting converted to an apartment complex without touching the outer structure, that wouldn’t qualify as construction by your definition either while I think calling it a renovation would be a massive understatement (given that even it’s purpose changes).
On top of that and more importantly, personally I don’t see much added value in making that distinction on a map: the purpose is to shows that the building is being “worked on for a significant enough amount of time to represent it on the map”. To my mind, that already qualifies it as a construction, as a renovation on average would be over quick enough not to qualify mapping it (a few exceptions confirming the rule).
But if there’s a use case or data consumers that are actually making that distinction, I’m happy to be corrected.
I actually gave you an example in my previous post that shows that this isn’t true (the quote starting with “Already existing features may be closed for …”). I’ve limited myself to buildings in that reply for the purpose of relevance, but such examples can be found for other objects on the construction= page, e.g.: “For minor road-works (where the road in question remains open), use (…)” which clearly also refers an existing road (otherwise it couldn’t remain open).
I suspect when writing about “construction”, building something new is simply the first thing that comes to mind. It’s the most obvious and easy thing to do think about. The need for mapping “new” construction sites probably also arrived sooner then that for buildings undergoing major rehab (looking at the natural process of mapping the world: starting with rough outlines, then adding more detail, then micromapping - and all the steps in between).
But neither of that means it was intended in a limiting way. It’s just human nature.
I can see (and agree with) that, which is why I welcome the discussion and believe it serves the purpose of verifying assumptions in either direction. After which - if and when we reach consensus - we could even update the wiki accordingly to prevent confusion on this point for future readers.
I would always be interested to know which building it is. Is only the outer shell affected by the renovation or can the interior also not be used or entered? If the entire building is renovated inside and out and cannot be used for its intended purpose, then in my opinion a disused:building is appropriate.
You are absolutely correct, my mistake. Is there an appropriate tag to signal a future point in time for something to be checked?
@roelant This ambiguity is exactly what lead to me posting - my first instinct was to tag construction=*, but I then couldn’t find any combination of tags which reflected the situation on the ground. This discussion has been very fruitful, I have a much clearer idea of how to approach it.
@APneunzehn74 The building in question is already fully tagged - the only problem is that it shows up on maps as an open and running attraction, which it is definitely not at the moment. My goal was to modify it so that the current situation is clear, without losing any of the existing data.
Does this mean the building or some point within it has some kind of tag beyond just the building, that identifies it as a place that can be visited? Like tourism=museum, tourism=attraction, amenity=place_of_worship, and so on. It may be one of those tags that should get the disused: prefix.
Generally I don’t think that the way renderers display buildings (without any of those other features) says anything about whether they can be visited or not, but maybe there are examples that are just not coming to my mind right now.
