Hi everyone,
I am tying to map slum area in OSM but didn’t find suitable tags to map them. Can anyone help me with it?
Thank you in advance.
This is one big slum area mapped in OSM, Kibera:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/-1.31497/36.78582
Wiki:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nairobi#Map_Kibera
That´t true, we don´t have definition of slum.
I would suggest for definition of slum area the use of two tags:
landuse=residential
residential=slum
Thank you marek kleciak for you quick response.
I also think this one will define slum area.
Certainly add an ‘adjectival’ or subtag using residential. I’m not sure about using slum though.
Slum isnt a very nice word: tends to come loaded with meaning(s). The usage of slum for informal settlements in poorer countries is at odds with the usage, say, in Western Europe: so it has other ambiguities.
I would suggest some of the following as alternatives: shantytown, bidonville, or perhaps informal_settlement. I probably prefer the latter, although I think I used shantytown in Port-au-Prince in 2010.
I afraid, nobody in such areas are humiliated about use of such attribute. The most people can not read and write, have no computer. And this tag is not visible in the map. One need advanced knowledge to realize what such description is. In Germany we talked about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanty_town for this use, but who know, before reading Wikipedia what shanty_town is? Slum sounds negative in some western countries, but this is hard reality in all developing countries and everybody know this meaning. But in general you are right: we have words they sounds bad, like paria, which is not used in Nepali. Meaning of used instead word dalit, is literally beautiful. Slum sounds negative but is very common and hurts nobody as a person. We need more such words for describing the reality in developing countries like illegal garbage area or area of sorting garbage or very polluted area impossible to stay and live for people. The description is first step to country modernisation, also for showing politician and people how the reality is.
Well said marek, according wikipedia ; A slum is a heavily populated urban informal settlement characterized by substandard housing and squalor.
+1 for marek kleciak’s comment. We need to be able to mark slums / ghettos clearly. Social sector orgs dedicated to welfare of residents of slum areas need geospatial knowledge of the communities they want to serve. In Pune, India an NGO named Shelter Associates (http://www.shelter-associates.org/index.php#research) has done commendable job in mapping slum areas of the city. The map data is a key requirement for several welfare projects like in-place rehabilitation, providing water and power services, etc. They want to open-source their work and we need OSM to be able to show that data effectively. Omitting these out of political correctness fears will lead to denial of welfare programs to the urban poor.
Update: Here is taginfo page on “slum”: https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/search?q=slum
As a key it has been used most as Slum=, 112 times
As a value it has been used most as building=slum, 832 times
The value use has been for marking individual households. But my own use case is to mark an area with multiple houses. And the instances I saw of Slum=* on Overpass API were more like my use case. So I am going with Slum=.
There isn’t a wiki page created for this yet, I hope over time we can gain more clarity on the matter.