Talk:Key:amenity

Sample photos at Tagwatch/Photos (reduced-size at http://dev.openstreetmap.org/~ojw/Tagwatch/en_tag_amenity.htm)

For a proposed major restructuring of this key, please see Proposed Amenity Reorganization

Contents 1 townhall: building or scroll 2 amenity in general 3 Rename "amenity" to "facility"? 4 Tagging residential care homes 5 Question about amenities 6 amenity = handrail

townhall: building or scroll

I don't like the townhall building. In some countries this could be a temple, church or touristic building. I know some other icon for administration: a script roll, such as http://imglib.lbl.gov/Imglib/gifs/scroll.gif (representing official announcements, legal matters, sealed documents etc.). --traut 13:18, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

amenity in general

I think amenity=* is not a good key at all. Defining something by its usefulness seems to me quite random. What seems to be an amenity for someone isn't for another one. For example there is an amenity=crematorium and an amenity=fire_station and an amenity=grave_yard and an amenity=prison. Isn't leisure=* an amenity or the man_made=pier or the aerialway=*? Shops and tourism attractions are also amenities in my opinion. I think these facilities should be regrouped. --Gkai 17:45, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Agree. Similar problems exist with tourism=*. After all, some amenity=librarys can be tourist attractions (like historic libraries), and some tourism=museums can be local amenities (with meeting rooms, research centres, and so on). Perhaps rather than trying to use something more generic, like feature=library though, we should accept that things like libraries can be tagged under either the amenity=* or tourism=* (or even attraction=*) depending on how they're used. Frankie Roberto 10:13, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I have a big problem with the fact that many businesses have more than one type of offerings. When mapping I usually find it very diffcult to choose only one. At least in my country it is very common that those who sell fuel also sells newspapers, tobacco and candy. Some that sells fuel also sells fast food. This is also a problem from map users point of view. If you want to make a search for a bar or pub you dont want to miss any good alternatives just because they mainly are a restaurant or a hotel. --Henriko 16:50, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Rename "amenity" to "facility"?

The word "facility" should be general enough and it's neutral, unlike amenity. What do you think about facility=crematorium, facility=fire_station, facility=grave_yard, facility=prison. It should work for the existing values for amenity as well. Sakaal 13:33, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea. An alternative might be using an even more general term like "place" or "poi" or "ploi" (place of interest). --Gkai 13:05, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Tagging residential care homes

This is my first entry, so forgive me if I'm out of place. I'm wondering whether there is a convention for tagging residential care homes (homes for the sick/elderly)? I've been looking but found none. If there is none, how about going with amenity=residential_care? Seems like a good idea to me to have these tagged. --Dragonfly 12:24, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Question about amenities

A couple questions:

1. Any reason there isn't a grocery store or food market amenity type? I notice there is a brothel type and this seems more important :-)
   1. Related to this, how do OSM members feel about adding more retail amenity types like book stores, clothing stores, etc?
2. Are all amenities on OSM user submitted or have there been bulk imports from other data sources?

See Key:shop for grocery store and almost any other facility for buying something. Most stuff is user submitted, only in some countries has there been imports of some individual chains. There was discussion of a similar scheme of "outside user's" contributing (in)directly quite recently on some of the mailing lists, but I couldn't find it straight away atm. Alv 21:48, 27 August 2010 (BST)

Thanks, Alv! Makes sense. Appreciate the help!

--Mrlerner 21:39, 30 August 2010 (BST)

amenity = handrail

There is one instance world-wide of the use of amenity=handrail,  37371628. It seems that the 'proper' tagging would be to isolate the section of path the handrail abuts and tag that with highway:handrail=right. Do you generally agree that the use of 'amenity' for tagging a handrail isn't quite what you would expect to see? Thanks for your input. --Ceyockey 02:48, 22 November 2010 (UTC)