Streets as area (old)

I realize, tagging with area:highway is widely used: http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/compare/area:highway/landuse=highway/area:highway

Proposal: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Street_area

Our collegues from Russia already render this feature in the map:
http://openstreetmap.ru/#map=17/55.73502/37.59597&layer=K

Maybe we could discuss about implementation of this tagging in Mapnik rendering?