OpenStreetMap
I drew in the boundary for Little Ocmulgee State Park, and was immediately confronted with a problem. I assumed that the area would be defined as recreation. No problem. However, when rendered the shading was only visible in the Telfair County portion. Land types overlay the park shading in Wheeler County.
It seemed that there were two ways to address this:
1. To force the area to overlay the land type.
2. Edit land type such that they terminate at the park boundary.
Neither was satisfactory. Forcing layers to overlay may be possible, but might play havoc with other features. Editing land types removes the information, and I was struck by how it so well matches the types of land within the park. What's needed is a boundary, similar to that of the adjacent town of Helena. This is the scheme used by the US Geologic Survey on their topo maps: State parks are denoted by a boundary overlaying the internal land types.
The problem is that there is no official state_park type. Still, it seemed to me to be the best solution. So, in JOSM, I copied and modified the key tags for the Helena boundary and applied it to the polygon encompassing Little Ocmulgee State Park. You can view the results by checking revision ID #7118966.
Obviously this can be changed back to area, or perhaps to some other boundary type. I'm seeking input here. How would others in the OSM community handle this problem?
Discussion
Comment from z-dude on 29 January 2011 at 03:23
in my area BC, I see leisure=nature_reserve
osm.org/?lat=49.35094&lon=-122.93087&zoom=15&layers=M
In Washington State, they use a multi-polygon relation to handle multiple park types.
osm.org/?lat=48.0968&lon=-123.8812&zoom=13&layers=M
In California, they seem to use the park:type=state_park to designate a state park.
osm.org/?lat=41.7404&lon=-124.11028&zoom=15&layers=M
Comment from Milliams on 29 January 2011 at 22:23
Looking at http://taginfo.openstreetmap.de/search?q=state_park#values there are a few 'state_park's around so it's possible that it's a suitable tag. Perhaps contact some of the people who have been using it to make sure everyone's using it for the same thing in the same way.
Comment from Binary Alchemy on 30 January 2011 at 05:41
So far I like the scheme I've seen in Canada best, provincial parks are tagged as:
boundary=national_park
boundary:type=protected_area
I would also add:
protection_title=State Park
and
ownership=state rather than admin_level=4, but both seems about equally used right now.
That way you get a rendering with the national_park green dotted line for now, and if/when protected_area starts getting rendered someone can easily use a bot to change the boundary.
Comment from Boondoggle on 30 January 2011 at 17:56
These are good suggestions. I've tinkered with the boundary attributes, but without much results. Will come back to it later. I may have to just delete the boundary and draw it again, or copy the attributes from one of the examples above, paste it to the boundary, and edit it for local values.
Comment from chriscf on 4 February 2011 at 04:47
If it walks like a National Park and talks like a National Park, then it's a National Park. :-)
Put less obtusely, if the primary difference between these and National Parks is the body in charge or who they report to (i.e. they are otherwise protected areas with planning restrictions, access limitations, etc.), then tag them in the same manner with appropriate operator=.