Faiyum

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Faiyum, Egypt

Latitude : 29.31, Longitude : 30.84

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Faiyum is a city in Egypt at latitude 29.31, longitude 30.84.

OpenStreetMap images (and underlying map data) are freely available under the OpenStreetMap License.

Geography

Sometimes known as ‘the garden of Egypt’, technically el-Faiyum is an oasis. Separated from the River Nile by a narrow stretch of desert, this fertile basin of land has a large lake, Birket Qarun on its northern side which is fed by the Bahr Yusef, a tributary of the Nile.

The region is mostly an agricultural area, its fertility provided by a series of irrigation canals which are intricately spread across the depression to supplement the natural wells and springs of the oasis. A wide variety of crops can be seen, depending on the season - the main one being cotton, but there is also wheat, rice, tomatoes and a large selection of fruit and vegetables. Much of the cultivated land is covered by groves of palm trees, for every part of the palm is of use.

Text from http://egyptsites.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/introduction-to-el-faiyum

Image from http://www.bing.com/maps

People involved

Anna Kathrin Hodgkinson (User:Anna1)
Joseph Reeves (User:Iknowjoseph)
Juan Lucas Domínguez (User:Jldominguez)

Data sources

Faiyum and the surrounding area is well covered by Bing imagery.
Some gps traces uploaded by Anna1 [1] are present and new ones will be mapped soon.
Some Africover data.

Coordination

Juan Lucas' tasks

Phase 1: Improving/adding main roads inside the road ring and roads connecting to it from the outside. Will change highway tags to balance the map.
Phase 2: Improving/adding not-so-important roads inside the ring (mostly secondary and tertiary).
Phase 3: Adding landuse polygons inside the ring. First I thought it'd be ok to leave a margin for canals, but I don't like how it looks so I think it's better if cultivated areas are limited by residential areas and roads, while canals can simply be mapped on top of the cultivated areas (landuse=farm).
Phase 4: Improving/adding buildings and other urban features (parks, parkings, etc).
Phase 5: Adding landuse=farm or residential outside the ring. Rural paths and canals everywhere.
Phase 6: Improving/adding residential highways inside the ring.
Phase 7: Road and amenity names, where from?

Current status: phases 1-5 completed. Phase 6 in progress.

Anna's tasks

Adding of roads in general, with as much detail as possible, inside the ring
Adding of canals and other waterways
Adding of archaeological site in the vicinity

(no phases)

Joseph

I've been tracing outside the ring road, but will also spend some time on KeepRight! errors.

The orchard/farm incident

User:Esperanza (who is probably a French/Arab woman despite her Spanish user name) changed the landuse tag from 'orchard' to 'farm' in some polygons inside the Faiyum road ring, for which she will most likely burn in hell. I think both are valid in this case, but I have seen that there are a number of landuse=farm around Cairo, so maybe the change was not a bad idea after all.