Hello OpenStreetMap community,
We’re writing to announce an upcoming organized editing project by Uber focused on improving pedestrian-related map data in Zagreb, Croatia.
As an initial phase, we plan to focus on the central area of Zagreb city. The goal of this project is to improve pedestrian map data in and around Zagreb’s city center to support more accurate pedestrian navigation that will allow our users to find their riders safer and more efficiently.
In the spirit of transparency and collaboration, we have published full project details on the OSM wiki: 
Uber Pedestrian Data Improvements around Key Venues
This project has also been added to the Organised Editing Activities page: Organised Editing/Activities
To illustrate the types of changes we’re planning, we’ve included a few representative examples from Zagreb below. These examples highlight common pedestrian mapping gaps we intend to review and address, such as:
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Missing sidewalks and pedestrian paths
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Missing or incomplete crossings
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Broken pedestrian network connectivity
| Location |
Observation |
| OpenStreetMap |
Sidewalk appears to be missing along Savski gaj XIII |
| OpenStreetMap |
Sidewalk appears to be missing along Prekratova ulica |
All proposed edits will be manually verified against the latest available aerial imagery before being made.
We will give the community time to review this announcement and share feedback before beginning any edits. We anticipate starting work in Zagreb in upcoming weeks.
We welcome any questions, concerns, or suggestions from local mappers — please feel free to reply here or reach out directly.
Thank you for your time and for helping keep OpenStreetMap accurate and useful for everyone!!.
I am quite worried by existing Uber track record regarding OSM editing; see e.g.:
Especially I have not seen Uber plans about how they will attempt to avoid such bad edits in the future (e.g. for Croatia edits), and especially how is Uber planing to verify/correct the damage / fake data already done by Uber editors?
I’ll give you some time to reply, and then open a vote afterwards, to see how Croatian community feels about proposed edits, given Uber’s existing track record and your answers on how Uber will attempt to do better. Please do not use AI/LLM to generate responses (as that would be a clear sign you do not wish to invest enough effort into OSM)
In any case, should community consensus ends up being to allow Uber edits, I would say those would be the minimum requirements to keep with OSM Croatia standards:
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Uber makes the following rules of conduct perfectly clear to every Uber mapper, and warn them in advance of disciplinary consequences should they not be following them
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Uber commits to promptly discussing any changeset discussions on their edits (should they be opened) and other attempts at contacts (e.g. direct OSM messages to editors, mentioning you here in forum via @RajeshSundaram etc.)
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use appropriate imagery. That is probably not worldwide imagery (unless it can be proven it is more recent than the Croatian-specific ones).
Currently, most recent imagery with best resolution is “dgu.hr: Croatia 2022-2023 LiDAR aerial imagery”, but there is newer “dgu.hr: Croatia 2023-2024 aerial imagery” (and soon there will be “2025-2026”). There are also even higher resolution drone imagery for Zagreb for 2020.
You should always use latest imagery for current information, but older higher-resolution ones should be used to see details if latest imagery is not clear enough.
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where available, cross-verify aerial imagery with street-view level imagery (i.e. panoramax, mapillary, …)
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clearly state which specific imagery (or imageries) has been used in changesets tags (as well as any other sources you used / which indicated to you this pedestrian path should be changed), preferably with dates of such sources if known.
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only do edits which are clearly and unambiguously visible on aerials
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only do edits if last edit time of OSM elements (e.g. ctrl-h in JOSM, or in web e.g. Way: Savski gaj XIII. (787677121) | OpenStreetMap) shows that they are older then the date of the aerials (e.g. if there is sidewalk:left=yes tagged by some OSM mapper in January 2026, and you’re using 2022-2023 imagery where sidewalk is not visible, you should definitely not be changing to sidewalk:left=no !)
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in general, it would be preferred to only add data when it is missing (e.g. add sidewalk:both=no where no sidewalk is visible on aerials and no sidewalk-related tags exists).
IOW, better not change existing values added by other mappers, unless the edits are ancient (e.g. modified about a decade or more ago) and situation changed for the better (i.e. sidewalk which was previously missing was added).
That precaution is is avoid very likely errors.
If some things are not certain (i.e. the aerial might be obsolete according to your other sources, or it is too blurry or ambiguous - e.g. is something cycleway or footway), instead of doing direct OSM edits, please instead:
- create a MapRoulette tasks with proposed edits (if there are more then a few of them), or
- leave a Note with
#surveyme hashtag in the note text (only if there would be at most few dozens of such changes. Otherwise, if Uber would create more than 100 notes, use MapRoulette route instead)
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