Parcel (cadastral) boundaries are great! Yup, *private* property

[osmuser63783]

@Minh_Nguyen

This raises an interesting question: if mappers aren’t generally able to improve individual property lines on their own, and there’s no need for explicit connections to OSM’s other data, does this read-only property boundary data belong in OSM? At that point, a separate layer might as well be a separate database, even if we make a mashup of OSM data and this other database

I think this discussion has come full circle, because that’s exactly how British cadastral parcels work in OSM. Not as an import but as a layer to be enabled in editors when mapping other things that are verifiable on the ground, such as leisure=garden garden:type=residential with a barrier=fence/wall/hedge in between them.

This discussion is also worth reading:

Add a Residential Property area-type for individual properties

I’d like to suggest adding a new area-type, named Residential Property, which would be used to mark out residential property boundaries (typically, the garden). Property names (generally, door numbers) would then be associated with the residential property (not the building). This would solve the problem where multiple properties are in the same building, as the Residential Property area splits the building up implicitly. Below is an example, using Garden areas to illustrate how this would wo…