| JesseFTW
July 19 |
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I want to toss in another vote against using the “amenity” key, as that ideally should be for things that are relevant for tourists, or at least useful to the public, which these small warehouses very much are not.
amenity is not specifically related to tourism, these places here are amenities for the people living around. We even have prisons under the amenity key. I like the proposed amenity=delivery_depot
It’s a warehouse. It’s not a shop. Therefore it should be tagged as a warehouse and not a shop. I’m honestly struggling to see what the difficulty is here.
Hm, I think
industrial=warehouseor=logisticsis out of the picture. It is documented as a subtag of landuse=industrial which would be something very different.
Why? If I order some furniture online it comes from a warehouse which will be tagged as a warehouse. If I order a book online it comes from a warehouse. If I order my supermarket shopping online it comes from a warehouse. Why is Getir somehow different to Ocado?
Agreed. It doesn’t matter if it is for tourists or local public. But the common think is that amenity is intended for general public. If only employees/contractors could (or would want to) visit such a place, then it does not fit under amenity=* in my opinion.
Why? If I order some furniture online it comes from a warehouse which will be tagged as a warehouse. If I order a book online it comes from a warehouse. If I order my supermarket shopping online it comes from a warehouse. Why is Getir somehow different to Ocado?
the specifics are different, we also distinguish waste baskets from waster containers and recycling centres. This shop is now a getir, it has nothing to do with an industrial warehouse, peeking through the door, it looks almost like a regular convenience store in the inside
the warehouse that delivers to this distribution point is likely a warehouse, although logistics are not really industrial, they are commercial operations (tertiary sector)
I didn’t say “an industrial warehouse”, I said “a warehouse”. 
The fact that the OSM tag for a warehouse is industrial=warehouse isn’t really an issue. The OSM tag for an emergency access point is highway=emergency_access_point even though an emergency access point isn’t a highway. And so on.
Its function is as a warehouse. It does exactly the same as an Ocado warehouse does: you order online, the workers pick the food off the shelves, it then gets loaded onto a truck or a motorbike or something and delievred to you. You can’t visit in person. End of.
If you want to tag the fact that the building’s external appearance is like a shop, then use the building= tag for that. But what it is is a warehouse.
The Dutch community had a discussion about dark stores a few months back: Dark stores
The consensus of that discussion is to use amenity=warehouse and that they are not shops since you cannot visit them as a customer.
I think so too.
Sure, there are big warehouses (industrial=warehouse) inside big industrial areas (landuse=industrial). But there are also small warehouses (the ones being discussed here), often in the middle of residential areas (landuse=residential).
Just like there are huge supermarket shops (shop=supermarket) in retail commercial areas (landuse=retail) or malls, but there are also small convenience shops (shop=convenience) also often in the middle of residential areas (landuse=residential)
I’m honestly struggling to see what the difficulty is here.
The core of that issue (as I understand it) seems to be that some people think we should tag small and big warehouses differently, even in cases when they behave mostly the same (just like we differ on shop=supermarket vs. shop=convenience).
We discussed this tag but decided it was unsuitable since these are simply not industrial. That’s another reason why amenity=warehouse was invented.
from outside they kind of look like shop, often are in places where shop used to be and sometimes pretend to be shops for legal purposes, and are support infrastructure for something replacing shops
so I am not highly confused by confusion here
(though they are not a shop)
Some cities in NL are already taking action to move dark stores outside their retail zones because the dark stores tend to turn welcoming city centres into some sort of social dead zones.
Then perhaps we are not talking about the same thing (sorry I have no idea what “getir” is)? The ones I’ve seen (not that you are really permitted to peek in, as it is “personnel only”) look like a big storage room (i.e. warehouse), and not like a convenience store. There are no cashiers, no checkouts, no self-service nor sellers, can’t use your cash or credit card or bitcoin there, in fact, you cannot even enter the place (legally). So definitely nothing like “a regular convenience store”.
For the ones where you (as a member of general public) can enter and pickup stuff you’ve bought online (instead of paying extra for delivery), and have a person with whom a member of a general public can interact to get the stuff they ordered online - we already have a tag in use for that, which I mentioned before (shop=outpost) - do you agree on that one?
You can see this differently, either say who cares, it’s OpenStreetMap tagging and there are other tags with weird semantics as well, I’ll add industrial=warehouse to any kind of warehouse, and will ignore the wiki which says the tag requires landuse=industrial and in general the industrial key requires one of landuse=industrial or man_made=works or usage=industrial with railway=*
Or you can acknowledge that there are different types of warehouses, and industrial=warehouse is for land predominantly used with industrial warehouses.
Actually, only warehouses which are related to a production facility are “industrial” (secondary sector), most or a significant part of warehouses are for distribution, import/export, wholesale, customs, logistics and more, and belong to the tertiary sector.
using industrial=warehouse for these small distribution points in stores in residential areas would be like using highway=emergency_access_point for access points you can only reach by boat. 
then maybe I did not express myself correctly, indeed you may not enter the place, there are no cashiers, no checkouts and you cannot pay there. I looks similar to a regular convenience store as they have shelves with goods, and the staff walks around with baskets and put things inside. The spacing between the shelves, the type of shelves and the goods are like a convenience store / small supermarket, maybe slightly narrower space. Hope this clarifies.
Well, that was not much of an improvement then, was it? It is not an amenity either (i.e. members of general public would not seek it out; much like they would not seek amenity=wastewater_plant were one inclined to mistag it as such).
So, replacing one, ah, sub-ideal key (industrial) with another sub-ideal key (amenity) is not progress IMHO (especially as any change by itself has a lot of negative impacts, which it should at least offset, and better additionally improve on)
So, if new key was sought because industrial=warehouse was found too confusing (how confusing are then tags like shop=hairdresser? Which goods exactly is one exchanging for money there?), I’d rather suggest something like commercial=warehouse instead of abusing amenity=* (which is somewhat overused anyway, even if the tag would fit there, which it doesn’t).
But, as noted earlier, I personally think that such attempts at renaming shop=hairdresser, highway=emergency_access_point, or industrial=warehouse are likely more problematic then beneficial. So I’d rather prefer to document existing usage (which is that big and small warehouses alike are tagged with only key we have for them, industrial=warehouse). But if it is a must to rename them, please let’s discuss and find more reasonable key (like mentioned commercial=warehouse; which is hopefully much less controversial, although I believe that someone will manage to find examples of non-commercial warehouses)
shop says it is for places selling goods or services.
We know that, but it was considered the least bad choice out of all main (top-level) keys. At least it was not yet in use for other types of places, unlike building=warehouse which is strictly for buildings and industrial=warehouse which is strictly for industrial places.
I also think that places that only offer services and no goods should be retagged from shop to something else, but that’s another topic for which you’re free to start another thread.
Is that how industrial=warehouse is used? Do you have examples?
Also, amenity=warehouse is a tag that is used for this.
The commercial=* key is currently completely undocumented, which does not help in the slightest.
I think I see what you mean to say. But in that way, postoffice and warehouse and supermarket and library all “look the same”.
But surely, that is because “having shelves” is a nature of anything having goods stored economically (I mean, without shelves, one would have much less storage space!) and the width of the “aisles” is also kept minimal as possible to still have the same utility, but maximize storage space.
My point is that we should tag them according to their function, not about their similar looks.
Also intersting points about looks (from the outside) - industrial warehouses may often additionally be tagged as building=warehouse, while that would practically never be the case for small ones in the city (most of which would be building=apartments or maybe building=retail - because their outside architectural style if not that of warehouse; even if their function is – but we have building:use=warehouse for tagging that)
I took the liberty of documenting amenity=warehouse as a tag for dark stores: Tag:amenity=warehouse - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Feel free to add information if you think that something is missing.
OT: A supermarket sells what would normally be sold in discrete shops: bread, meat, fish, vegetables, beverages, flowers, tobacco, post stamps and so on.
+1, this is also not integrating well with the established tagging (also “industrial”). These look like keys to specify a more detailed landuse. Feature tags for this kind of thing are probably most fitting into “man_made” (e.g. man_made=works).
It could be “man_made=warehouse” for the function of storing. Subtags could specify the kind of warehouse and its purpose.
