add strings for landuses and government by novolife · Pull Request #1609 · openstreetmap/id-tagging-schema

novolife · 2025-06-23T14:18:08Z

Description, Motivation & Context

Strings were added to the type of residential=*, industrial=*, military=* of landuse=* and government=* for ease of retrieval as well as translation. Selected some of the most commonly used and less controversial values for each key, especially landuse=industrial.

For military=*, since some values are not suitable for landuse=military, autoSuggestions is false.

As my English is not good, I hope that someone can help me to confirm that the content in the string is in accordance with American English.

Related issues

Links and data

Relevant OSM Wiki links:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:residential
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:industrial
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:military
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:government

Relevant tag usage stats:

https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/residential#values
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/industrial#values
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/military#values
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/government#values

Checklist and Test-Documentation Template

Read on to get your PR merged faster…

Follow these steps to test your PR yourself and make it a lot easier and faster for maintainers to check and approve it.

This is how it works:

After you submit your PR, the system will create a preview and comment on your PR:

🍱 Your pull request preview is ready.
If this is your first contribution to this project, the preview will not happen right away but requires a click from one of the project members. We will do this ASAP.
Once the preview is ready, use it to test your changes.
Now copy the snippet below into a new comment and fill out the blanks.
Now your PR is ready to be reviewed.

## Test-Documentation

### Preview links & Sidebar Screenshots

<!-- Use the preview to find examples, select the feature in question and **copy this link here**.
     Find examples of nodes/areas. Find examples with a lot of tags or very few tags. – Whatever helps to test this thoroughly.
     Add relevant **screenshots** of the sidebar of those examples. -->

<!-- FYI: What we will check:
     - Is the [icon](https://github.com/ideditor/schema-builder/blob/main/ICONS.md) well chosen.
     - Are the fields well-structured and have good labels.
     - Do the dropdowns (etc.) work well and show helpful data. -->

### Search

<!-- **Test the search** of your preset and share relevant **screenshots** here.
     - Test the preset name as search terms.
     - Also test the preset terms and aliases as search terms (if present). -->

### Info-`i`

<!-- **Test the info-i** for your fields and preset and share relevant **screenshots** here.
     The info needs to help mappers understand the preset and when to use it.
     [Learn more…](https://github.com/openstreetmap/id-tagging-schema/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#info-i)
 -->

### Wording

- [ ] American English
- [ ] `name`, `aliases` (if present) use Title Case
- [ ] `terms` (if present) use lower case, sorted A-Z
<!-- Learn more in https://github.com/openstreetmap/id-tagging-schema/blob/main/GUIDELINES.md#2-design-the-preset -->

github-actions · 2025-06-23T14:20:30Z

🍱 Your pull request preview is ready

Please use this preview to check your changes. Ideally use the test documentation template and document your test results by commenting on the PR. This will speed up the review process for everyone.

FYI, once this PR is merged, you can use the iD Editor Preview to test your changes in interaction with all other changes.

novolife · 2025-06-23T14:46:00Z

Test-Documentation

Preview links & Sidebar Screenshots

Info-`i`

Wording

American English
name, aliases (if present) use Title Case
terms (if present) use lower case, sorted A-Z

novolife · 2025-09-20T14:57:04Z

Can someone please review this modified PR?

matkoniecz · 2025-10-21T08:43:48Z

closing and reopening to get preview working

matkoniecz · 2026-02-26T01:17:47Z

+    "strings": {
+        "options": {
+            "rural": "Rural",
+            "apartments": "Apartments",


with this labels it is completely confusing when Urban and when Apartments and when Condominium and when Block is supposed to be used

BTW, after reading https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key%3Aresidential I am not entirely sure

Condominium is also not appearing at all at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key%3Aresidential

=condominium : Has been succeeded by condo= , which can be used on building=apartments easily. The word isn't standard worldwide. They may simply be called apartment. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:residential=condominium

=block : I don't understand what this means either. Seems to be a unit of size, orthogonal to others.

residential=* iteratively refines both landuse=residential and building=residential. Some values make sense for one but not the other, such as trailer_park and irregular_settlement. We might need to split it into two separate fields.

matkoniecz · 2026-02-26T01:20:38Z

+            "urban": "Urban",
+            "condominium": "Condominium",
+            "trailer_park": "Trailer Park",
+            "irregular_settlement": "Irregular Settlement",


https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key%3Aresidential mentions it is euphemism for slum, though "Irregular Settlement" has problem of not being really clear - I initially though that it refers to case of really bad urban design or lack thereof with houses wildly scattered across fields

Not sure is it just me being unaware that "Irregular Settlement" is euphemism for "Slum".

Using "Slum" or "Irregular Settlement (Slum)" label would break reason for using euphemism in the first place.

Personally and ideally, it's orthogonal too. There are 2k informal=yes used, which could be used on all structures (houses, apartment, trailers, tents, etc). https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/informal#combinations

As far as I can tell, the Indian and Latin American communities seem to have a soft consensus around using landuse=residential residential=irregular_settlement for these settlements, for lack of anything better. “Irregular settlement” is an established term particularly in India, where it corresponds to a quasi-legal designation. American English would call it a “shanty town”, though it might lose some nuance. “Slum” would be impolite or politically incorrect these days. Other terms like “informal settlement” or “favela” are also known in the dialect.

matkoniecz · 2026-02-26T01:22:29Z

+            "irregular_settlement": "Irregular Settlement",
+            "detached": "Detached",
+            "terrace": "Terrace",
+            "university": "University",


and how you specify landuse=residential which is bunch of apartment buildings for students? One more orthogonal category.

Maybe residential= should be purged from iD presets if it is so badly designed? Or so badly organically grown?

Per #1958 (comment), I don’t think removing residential=* is feasible, unless you have a better suggestion for tagging apartment complexes (apartments) and mobile home parks (trailer_park).

1ec5

There’s a lot going on in here that should probably be broken out into multiple PRs. I left some feedback, mainly regarding the labels, which should be in American English as the development language of this repository.

1ec5 · 2026-02-26T21:40:16Z

+            "urban": "Urban",
+            "condominium": "Condominium",
+            "trailer_park": "Trailer Park",
+            "irregular_settlement": "Irregular Settlement",


As far as I can tell, the Indian and Latin American communities seem to have a soft consensus around using landuse=residential residential=irregular_settlement for these settlements, for lack of anything better. “Irregular settlement” is an established term particularly in India, where it corresponds to a quasi-legal designation. American English would call it a “shanty town”, though it might lose some nuance. “Slum” would be impolite or politically incorrect these days. Other terms like “informal settlement” or “favela” are also known in the dialect.

1ec5 · 2026-02-26T21:42:41Z

+    "strings": {
+        "options": {
+            "rural": "Rural",
+            "apartments": "Apartments",


residential=* iteratively refines both landuse=residential and building=residential. Some values make sense for one but not the other, such as trailer_park and irregular_settlement. We might need to split it into two separate fields.

1ec5 · 2026-02-26T21:44:09Z

+            "irregular_settlement": "Irregular Settlement",
+            "detached": "Detached",
+            "terrace": "Terrace",
+            "university": "University",


Per #1958 (comment), I don’t think removing residential=* is feasible, unless you have a better suggestion for tagging apartment complexes (apartments) and mobile home parks (trailer_park).

1ec5 · 2026-02-26T22:00:12Z

+            "social_security": "Social Security",
+            "customs": "Customs",
+            "environment": "Environment",
+            "cadaster": "Cadaster",


By the way, this term is completely unknown in American English. Probably a more understandable term would be “Land Office” or “Land Registration Office”, but this isn’t a general term like cadaster/cadastre is in other dialects.

For context, the U.S. doesn’t have cadastral agencies per se. Most of the country follows the record title system. I think the responsibility for managing this system normally resides in what we’d tag as register_office. The six occurrences of government=cadaster in the U.S. are all over the place:

Bureau of Land Management office – probably the closest thing we have to a cadastral registration office, but only for federal lands

County GIS agency – craft=cartographer?

County GIS agency

County recorder’s office – government=register_office?

County title bureau – government=register_office?

City planning and zoning office – government=planning? government=building_control?

1ec5 · 2026-02-26T22:00:49Z

+            "register_office": "Register",
+            "legislative": "Legislative",
+            "transportation": "Transportation",
+            "ministry": "Ministry",


The American English term would be “department”. It would need to get translated to “ministry” in most of the other English localizations.

@1ec5 thanks very much for checking is it in the correct English!

1ec5 · 2026-02-26T22:05:10Z

+            "public_service": "Public Service",
+            "tax": "Tax",
+            "register_office": "Register",
+            "legislative": "Legislative",


This documentation claims that this is for the seat of legislature specifically, but given the tag name, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s used more broadly for any office associated with a legislature or legislator in their official capacity.

1ec5 · 2026-02-26T22:06:20Z

+            "culture": "Culture",
+            "statistics": "Statistics",
+            "audit": "Audit",
+            "parliament": "Parliament"


Is this limited to countries that call their legislative body a parliament? Would these countries use government=legislative for more local legislative bodies?

1ec5 · 2026-02-26T22:06:38Z

+            "cadaster": "Cadaster",
+            "culture": "Culture",
+            "statistics": "Statistics",
+            "audit": "Audit",


Suggested change

"audit": "Audit",

"audit": "Auditor",

1ec5 · 2026-02-26T22:09:45Z

+            "single_family": "Single Family",
+            "urban": "Urban",
+            "condominium": "Condominium",
+            "trailer_park": "Trailer Park",


“Trailer park” is a well-known term but somewhat politically incorrect these days. I documented this tag only because it was the most common among several tags at the time. “Mobile home park” is the less stigmatized term, which we’re already using for the preset:

id-tagging-schema/data/presets/landuse/residential/trailer_park.json

Line 28 in ce6e124

"name": "Mobile Home Park"

1ec5 · 2026-02-26T22:11:12Z

+            "trailer_park": "Trailer Park",
+            "irregular_settlement": "Irregular Settlement",
+            "detached": "Detached",
+            "terrace": "Terrace",


This is a British term. In American English, we’re using “row of townhouses” for building=terrace, which implies “townhouses” for landuse=residential residential=terrace.

id-tagging-schema/data/presets/building/terrace.json

Line 27 in ce6e124

"name": "Row of Townhouses"

matkoniecz · 2026-03-13T06:08:50Z

@novolife do you plan to address these comments or should it be closed as an abandoned PR?

add strings

01cd3c3

update military

78be88a

tordans added the field label Jun 23, 2025

matkoniecz reviewed Jun 27, 2025

View reviewed changes

Comment thread data/fields/industrial.json Outdated

matkoniecz requested changes Jul 1, 2025

View reviewed changes

Comment thread data/fields/industrial.json Outdated

novolife added 2 commits August 1, 2025 10:55

Merge branch 'openstreetmap:main' into strings

3f1ec9d

revert adding

6981cce

novolife requested a review from matkoniecz August 1, 2025 02:59

matkoniecz closed this Oct 21, 2025

matkoniecz reopened this Oct 21, 2025

matkoniecz reviewed Feb 26, 2026

View reviewed changes

1ec5 mentioned this pull request Feb 26, 2026

remove support for residential= ? #1958

Closed

1ec5 reviewed Feb 26, 2026

View reviewed changes

matkoniecz added the waitfor-requested-changes This PR is waiting for an update to incorporate requested changes from a PR review. label Mar 8, 2026

matkoniecz added the new-value adds value(s) to existing field label Mar 13, 2026

matkoniecz closed this Mar 27, 2026

Uh oh!

Conversation

novolife commented Jun 23, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Description, Motivation & Context

Related issues

Links and data

Checklist and Test-Documentation Template

Uh oh!

github-actions Bot commented Jun 23, 2025

Uh oh!

novolife commented Jun 23, 2025

Test-Documentation

Preview links & Sidebar Screenshots

Info-i

Wording

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

novolife commented Sep 20, 2025

Uh oh!

matkoniecz commented Oct 21, 2025

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Kovoschiz Feb 26, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

1ec5 left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

Uh oh!

matkoniecz commented Mar 13, 2026

Uh oh!

Reviewers

Assignees

Labels

Projects

Milestone

Development

Uh oh!

5 participants

novolife commented Jun 23, 2025 •

edited

Loading

Info-`i`

Kovoschiz Feb 26, 2026 •

edited

Loading