Talk:Relation:land area
How is this tag used?
Is this tag needed? The coastline is already used to make land polygons and ocean polygons. You can use this to find the land area of an administrative boundary.
Taginfo's map shows this tag is only used frequently in Canada and Libya, though there are a dozen others: https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/land_area=administrative#map
Does anyone know how this tag is used by mappers? Is it being used by any database end-users? --Jeisenbe (talk) 13:28, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
- There is a changeset where this is being discussed: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/138658592
- There was a discussion in the osm2pgsql bug tracker too: https://github.com/openstreetmap/osm2pgsql/issues/994
- Around 90 objects are tagged as type=boundary + boundary=land_area, and around 100 as type=land_area
Misleading and Unclear
The meaning of the land_area=* tag is unclear. Although it has been used widely, it is almost exclusively (>99%) used as land_area=administrative and not with other values. It's not clear how this is distinct from land_area=yes.
In addition, the documentation on this wiki page does not reflect the current usage of the land_area=* tag. It is primarily (>95%) used in combination with boundary=administrative and, where it is used in relations, in conjunction with type=boundary. The suggested usage of type=land_area for relations has not been adopted and is contrary to common usage.
If the land_area=* tag is to remain in usage, this wiki page needs to be updated with a clear explanation of the purpose, meaning, and usage of the tag and the documentation needs to reflect actual usage. Absent that, I suggest that the tag be deprecated.