[RFC] Feature Proposal – Developer

General talk
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I’d like to hear your thoughts about my Proposal:Developer.

This tag would identify the company or organization that developed a building, apartment complex, housing development, office building, skyscraper, school, etc. This conveys valuable information, especially for users interested in urban development, construction, and real estate projects. This tag is already in use more than 8,000 times and is already documented. This proposal would simply standardize its usage.

Please discuss here, or if not on the Wiki talk page.

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Indeed, I thought about that similarity when I read Key:builder - OpenStreetMap Wiki. I’ll make sure to add extensive details in the section Not to be confused with on the Wiki page. Other than that, I think this distinction is pretty clear.

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I think if we are going to record this kind of information, we should be precise about the role. We already have “architect” and “engineer” (supposedly referring to structural engineer, I used it for bridges built by notable engineers, admittedly not used a lot yet), other roles that are common for bigger construction projects, but which do not necessarily occur all (depends on the project organization / structure) are:

  • commercial agent / business representative (manages the business affairs like contracts and finance/cash flow of the project, maybe also sales, on behalf of someone else (the proprietor) but is not an employee)

  • Project Manager (oversees planning and construction on behalf of the client, and there are other Project Managers who do the same on behalf of the contractor/builder)

  • Project Controller (oversees the Project Manager, is a controlling structure, may do some work in parallel like estimating costs, controlling qualities, etc. to compare with the actual plans)

  • Project Developer (initiates the project, plans and manages the property, brings technical, legal, financial aspects together to get from the idea to a buildable and profitable project)

  • General Contractor with subcontracting (turnkey), delivers the full building (planning, permissions, building), is contractually responsible to deliver a finished building but will usually assign tasks to subcontractors

  • General Contractor (self-perfoming) will do the same as above, but with inhouse capacities

(I am not sure, whether the 2 aforementioned terms are precise, because there is also the distinction between companies who only do the planning (General planner) and those who only do the building work (and not the contracts), and those who do all of it.)

  • Investor provides capital to build the thing (either by themselves or by appointing a project manager)

  • General Planner (does all planning themselves or assigns to subcontractors)

Usually in a building project, there is not just an architect and a structural engineer, there are lots of specialized engineers (earthwork / foundation, electricity medium voltage and low voltage, lighting, hvac, fire protection, environmental issues, …) and according to the project structure, they either are subcontractors of the architect, the engineering company, the general planner, the general contractor, … or are e.g. directly contracted by the client.

Every building project is different in this regard, the structures are usually complex and not necessarily transparent to understand from the outside, although it may be possible to get to know the different roles involved, e.g. by looking at their website or the sign at the construction site.

Definitely we can not just have a “developer” and “builder” role and be done.

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To me it looks like mapping historic data that is typically not verifiable by survey.

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I was referring to this particular role. And you’re right to say a real estate project has many roles, but this tag is simply for the company that “owns”, initiates and finances the project. The real estate developer, simply. And many big real estate companies have that data readily available on their website (see Anfa Realties below).

And what’s wrong with that? Just like architect=*, no?

Say I want to look up all the locations of all the projects developed by Anfa Realties (see “Our Projects” section at the top), they would come right up by querying “developer”=“Anfa Realties”. I find that information engaging, and if someone is interested by this subject, they can simply add that tag to the project in question (just like it’s been done more than 11k times).

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https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Verifiability

I dislike also this one, but this is far often actually verifiable by survey or recorded as art of history

developer is having all its problems and it is more about detailed legal/financial/tax setup

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OSM data should, as far as is reasonably possible, be verifiable.

Isn’t this verifiable? On the website of the developer, ads, social media posts or even signs at the construction area? In most cases, I don’t think it’s insider knowledge, simply public information.

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Seeing this, now I’m unsure if this is proposing anything new that isn’t already covered by a combination of funder=*, builder=*, and owner=*, all reasonably well-established keys.

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I personally see a big difference between developer, funder , builder , and owner. Maybe this proposal will help clear the confusion and actually differentiate between these tags if each of them is properly documented.

Developer: The company or organization responsible for planning, initiating, developing and eventually marketing and selling the project in order to make profit, e.g. real estate developers.

Funder: The entity that provides the funding for the project, e.g. governments, banks, NGOs, or private investors.

Builder: The company or contractor that physically constructs the structure, e.g. construction companies.

Owner: The current legal owner of the object or land, e.g. individuals, companies, or public institutions that own the asset.

developer and similar tags have more than 11k uses.

builder has 2815 uses and funder has 57 uses. What do you mean exactly by “reasonably well-established keys”?

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like start_date? IMHO there is an interest for e.g. architect, particularly in case of famous architects, and it is typically verifiable then, when they are famous.

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Ah, I forgot to check the actual usage stats. :man_facepalming: funder=* along with beneficiary=* are documented as part of the tagging scheme for funding signs, which is about three years old.

Like a lot of historical information, dates of significance and architects can be verifiable on site, which is not to say that they always are.

Utah Historic Site: Cathedral of the Madeleine. Begin with land purchase in 1889. Dedicated 1909. Architects: C.M. Neuhausen, B.O. Mecklenburg, John Comes. Built under leadership of Bishop Lawrence Scanlon with monies from the Pius Fund, mining philanthropists, and parishioners.
Utah Historic Site: Cathedral of the Madeleine. Begin with land purchase in 1889. Dedicated 1909. Architects: C.M. Neuhausen, B.O. Mecklenburg, John Comes. Built under leadership of Bishop Lawrence Scanlon with monies from the Pius Fund, mining philanthropists, and parishioners.1512×2016 1.6 MB

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yes

and developer is even less often verifiable in such way

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Did anyone post this announcement on the tagging mailing list?

Edit: it’s done.

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I agree with you the ref:developer and building:developer are poor tags, but I don’t think that using developer instead would make it better.

That sounds to me more like a PR info than anything else. If we start tagging the “developer” for certain buildings, what comes next? The bank which gave the money to the developer? The general contractor or the builder? The subcontractors for electric and sanitary installation, ventilation, safety equipment and so on and so on? You will find all these informations in the internet and/or for a short while on the construction advertisement signs but no way to verify that lateron on the ground.

I already do not favour the use of “architect” but this is at least the person or company being responsible for the design and as such remains visible as long as a building or structure stands on the ground. But the developer?

The only use of any developer tag which makes sense to me is for the office or premises where such a developer is residing: office=developer.

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Can’t tell if that was a sarcasm or you were dead serious, but if follow that train of though, even listing all of them is not enough.

Also, surely subcontractors are way more important than the general contractor (i.e. if water pipes are badly done, you’d want to know who is is responsible for that part), and then it is very important in which period which subcontractor was doing what part of the building. There could well be multiple, especially for bigger buildings or prolonged periods of building. (not to mention later works)

At that point[1], I’d just slap a building:wikidata on that building (or building part) and add proper searchable links on wikidata who was doing what in which capacity to what part of the building during what period.

Since ref:developer is significantly more popular, why not use that?

Also, the proposal only mentions plans for deprecating other values. You are aware that will still mean that any data consumes will need to parse all existing tags, so eventual proposal acceptance won’t change anything there?

Also, could you fix proposal status on Proposal:Developer - OpenStreetMap Wiki?

IMHO, the developer (at least in my country) is legally required to publish what is being developed and where, and also post such notices on a building site.

Compared to architect=* (not to mention owner=*!) which are only rarely posted, that is actually much more verifiable in most cases.

That being said, I don’t have particular interest in that infomation myself, but given 11k+ usages I’d support properly documenting and defining that ATYL and recommended practices.

It’s not like the purpose of this proposal is “should we map that information?” (that particular cat has been out of the bag for more then a decade), it is more of "this information is already being recorded but in multitudes of ways, can we properly document and settle on one of them?"

  1. if I really cared, which I don’t ↩︎

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doesn’t seem so: The Tagging June 2025 Archive by thread

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That one does not make sense to me; you’d use name=* on that office=developer for developer name, not developer=*?

That sounds to me more like a PR info than anything else.

Is that really a concern? Given last decade and a half of that tag being used, has there been noticeable attempts to abuse that for PR purposes? IMHO, if developers started publicly announcing “see, we have this many buildings on OSM” that would probably be a bigger PR for OSM that the reverse. Other than that, nobody would even see that data, except some special purposely-made renderer, or people searching specifically for that data, so it has low spam-potential I’d say.

If we start tagging the “developer” for certain buildings, what comes next?

Err, we do not “start” tagging it. It has been tagged since at least 2010. What tag comes next? Hard to say, but likely something people deem worthwhile to spend decades mapping has a good chance to be the one :wink:

You will find all these informations in the internet and/or for a short while on the construction advertisement signs but no way to verify that lateron on the ground.

Sure, but neither are you usually going to found neighborhood boundaries marked on the ground, or power capacity of power plants or voltage of power towers, or owners, or implied speed limits, or many of the ref:* tags or many other things.

Should all that be removed too? How would doing it make OSM a better map? (because I can tell you how it would make many existing mappers ragequit and many OSM users calling for someone’s head, not to mention make for terrible PR for OSM).

OSM is a community - for it to work, one would do well to learn to tolerate harmless quirks of others (even, or especially, when they don’t care about their particular area of interest). Just imagine if someone was trying to advocate to erase some of your work, because it doesn’t “fit” properly. How would you feel?

TL;DR: I’d say that ATYL is what made OSM prosper where others have failed.

I wouldn’t mess with it unless there was a pretty good reason, and I struggle to see what would be gained by refusing to document, clarify and unify tag that has been used for more than a decade (or worse, if the intention is to propose mechanical edit to remove all such allegedly “inappropriate” data)

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during construction: yes

for building build one, 10 or 30 years ago - no

and I really like Verifiability - OpenStreetMap Wiki because it allows in case of dispute to go onto location and map what is there

that is very often not possible here, so I am not great fan of promoting mapping this kind of things (seems more viable when there are signs, but obviously it will not end limited to such cases)

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Because it’s not a reference. A simple tag is always better, just like architect.

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It also seems to be mainly localised in the UK, and within the UK, London and a few other areas. No idea why it would have arisen, as the values are clearly genuine names of developers, not references.

Picking a few at random, quite a few have been added by recently active mappers. Perhaps it would be worth contacting one or two and asking if there is a specific reason they use this key. As it’s quite specialised, they might share your interest in standardising this information.

(Aside on verifiability: the developer where I live is still easily verifiable 25 years on thanks to a large sign at the access road… even though they went bankrupt many years ago).

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