I am currently working on mapping the town I live in. When defining houses, I define a building as “House” and enter its info (address, postal code).
Part of my town has already been mapped by someone else. For houses, they create a building of type “Building”, and then add a separate feature “Address” with the address info (unfortunately, mostly incomplete). I believe these features are not imported from an external source, but manually created. See this pic:
Is there a preferred way of mapping houses? I am more than willing to rework their entries (I have to add postal codes in all these entries anyways).
I am aware of the possibilities. In this instance, the houses mapped by the other person are not tagged as “house”, but only use the generic “building”. They then used a separate feature to add the address, whereas I think it would make more sense to actually tag it as a house, and add the address right in that feature (instead of using a separate feature just for the address).
I guess I am just making sure I am not too nitpicky - if how the previous mapper did things is just fine, I will leave these extra “address features” as-is (and only add the postal codes and other missing info).
Hi Niek and welcome to the forum. It is always a good to crosscheck the buildings mapped in your place from time to time, add new ones and complete the tagging if necessary. By doing so it is a good idea not only to complete the addresses but also check how the building itself is tagged (residential … house … detached … garage etc.) and make corrections if necessary. Many buildings are just mapped as building=yes so this could be improved. Have a look at the wiki page mentioned by @ToniE for more details.
In regard of the address tagging both options are regularly used - tagging the address directly to the building or adding a separate node to the building, usually where the entrance is. See the wiki page key:addr. for more details.
The general recommendation is to follow the tagging scheme which is already in use for the majority of the buildings in your area. Here in my area most addresses are tagged directly to the building itself, so if I get in touch with an address tagged to a separate node I usually move it to the building, but I would not do that if I work in an area where the majority of addresses is tagged to nodes like in your screenshot.
In some cases (multiple entrances with separate addresses for a single building) the use of address-nodes is the best solution.
If adding building shapes to an area that has address nodes, I use the “replace geometry” function of JOSM to move the address area to the building I have added. That also uses the original address node as one of the vertices of the new polygon which preserves history.
If adding addresses to a building, I just add the information to the building polygon.
I am not clear on the difference between building=detached and building=house but I generally use building=detached for a single family residence.
Thanks for the details! Looks like I will leave the separate address nodes in place, but I will update them with the postal codes, and I will change the building tags to “house”.
I prefer building=house + house=* to building=detached or building=semi_detached. If you were to ask a random person in the street what sort of building it was, they’d say it was a house. They might say it’s a detached, semi-detached, or terraced house, but they’ll still say it’s a house.
building=detached refers to a detached house i.e. a single family house with no immediate neighbours (if two houses are touching each other, it’s a building=semidetached_house, if multiple then the whole complex is building=terrace), building=house is a single family house in general with the type being specified in house=*.
A better comparison is thus between building=detached and building=house; house=detached.
Edit: Small correction of terraced houses (when mapped as building=*).
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Mammi71
(One feature, Six mappers and still More ways to map it)
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or a solitary house (single-family house) in a row of touching houses, which do not necessarily have to be terraced houses
Just to add that BuildingsTools plugin for JOSM has an option to merge address node onto building (move address to building and delete address node). Install plugin, select both address (which should be inside building) and building and from menu do “More tools”->“Draw buildings mode”->“Merge address points” (I use shortcut). It can be quite “dangerous” tool, as it can put POIs too to buildings and you can blast whole town with it and it doesn’t preserve node history (it is impossible of course), but if you go with addresses on buildings, this is tool to be aware of.
We need the reverse here in Italy… addresses are mapped explicitly as nodes… can be at the gate, can be at the front door(s) of the building outline. Painful process to extract to address node and POI and leave only building related tags on the real estate.
Painful process to extract to address node and POI and leave only building related tags on the real estate.
the POI with its address on an area should not be reduced to a node, you could make a new way or a MP relation for POIs (also add a level tag if you know it), the entrance with its address would be a node on top.
Copy building > create node, Ctrl+Shft+V dumps the tags on node > delete building tags from node and you have a separate POI. Create second node, copy address tags from POI and Ctrl+Shft+V populates the address node. Select building again, select all, deselect building related tag(s), hit delete and you have a clean building, then place address and POI at appropriate spots if not done already in previous steps. ;?)
I have an even shorter version, but I’ll save that for the next installment, all the while loosing the history of the POI which really sits in the building.
That would make the scheme complicated because there are also categories like hut, bungalow and residential. Are that houses or not? And which would be the top category, house or residential?
That would make the scheme complicated because there are also categories like hut, bungalow and residential. Are that houses or not? And which would be the top category, house or residential?
Houses are from these:
hut maybe but rather not
bungalow yes
residential is more generic and some are houses while others are not
I’m in the UK, so building=hut is unlikely to be any form of permanent residence.
A bungalow is more usefully tagged as building=house + house=detached + building:levels=1 or building=house + house=semi-detached + building:levels=1. There’s nothing so special about a single-storey house that it desperately needs its own building=* tag.
The main use of building=residential is where the mapper is uncertain whether it should be building=house or building=apartments.
There’s nothing so special about a single-storey house that it desperately needs its own building=* tag.
it is disputable at which level the bungalow should be put (if at all), but there is more connotation to the term bungalow than being a single storey building. For example it implies a certain period, you won’t find a 16th century bungalow, would you?
I agree the term is not very clear, especially when it comes to global use (see examples in WP about usage in different contexts and the documentation in OpenStreetMap about local expectations: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:building%3Dbungalow ), but there is documentation which seems suitable to infer at least the attributes you suggest, and possibly provide more indications than those alone.
