There are a number of ongoing discussions about the geocoder on osm.org (Nominatim) in the forum at the moment. These include spelling tolerance, how it might work with data that does not exist in OSM yet and what it actually returns.

Sometimes the results of the last of those can be a bit odd. Here for example is a post office not far from me. The returned data (“Stillington Post Office & Stores, Main Street, Stillington, York, North Yorkshire, York and North Yorkshire, England, YO61 1JS, United Kingdom”) has three things that could plausibly be a county in there - York itself, North Yorkshire, and York and North Yorkshire. In OSM these are respectively a nearby place=city node, and encompassing admin_level=6 and admin_level=5 relations.

The problem here is, like in the case of the Northern Irish super-councils mentioned in the forum, the data returned by Nominatim does match administrative areas but doesn’t entirely match places that people associate themselves with. Actually, we have three different hierarchies here:

• Postal (street address, village, post town, postcode, as returned by the Royal Mail’s postcode checker).
• Administrative (street address, civil parish, unitary council, combined authority, country)
• Geographic (street address, “something that implies where in Yorkshire”, either “North Yorkshire” or “Yorkshire”, country)

All of these have problems. Depending on who you talk to postal addresses should or should not include the “post town” any more, and that is very often not the nearest town, in the same county, or even nearby. The administrative regions don’t map onto any human places at all, and several different geographic hierarchies are possible.

I decided to see whether it would be possible to make Nominatim return a hierarchy from one plausible geographic (as opposed to administrative) scheme - that based on traditional counties. The English examples of these are mostly in OSM. They’re even signed on the ground in some places, for example here and here. There’s a whole discussion to be had about (a) do they belong in OSM or OHM and (b) if the latter, who’s going to move the data and based on what source. The English “traditional counties” in OSM seem to be the immediately pre-1974 ones, but of course boundaries did change a great deal leading up to that point (for example, Crayke, not far from our example post office above, was in Durham until 1844).

It’s relatively straightforward to “download OSM data, perform a known set of changes on it, and then do something else with it”. The raster, vector and Garmin maps that I create do that already. The code to do the necessary changes to remove “admin without place” and add “pretend admin levels” for the places we want to use instead is fairly simple. The code to reload a Nominatim database based on a Geofabrik download area is also simple.

Here’s what the results look like on a test server:

https://h20.atownsend.org.uk/nominatim/search?q=53.8234,-1.1397
Bell Lane, Cawood, West Riding of Yorkshire, Yorkshire, England, YO8 3RA, United Kingdom

That’s correctly returned “West Riding of Yorkshire” (the historic division that Cawood was in) and “Yorkshire”.

https://h20.atownsend.org.uk/nominatim/search?q=53.2597,0.2012
Back Lane, Bilsby, Parts of Lindsey, Lincolnshire, England, LN13 9PT, United Kingdom"

Likewise, for somewhere in Lincolnshire.

https://h20.atownsend.org.uk/nominatim/search?q=54.3446,-7.6285
Westville Terrace, Tonystick, Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, BT74 6GG, United Kingdom

Likewise for somewhere in one of the six counties in Northern Ireland. The “super-council” here is “Fermanagh and Omagh District Council” and that isn’t returned.

Somewhere in London that was historically in Middlesex:

https://h20.atownsend.org.uk/nominatim/search?q=51.5183438,-0.0785237
Williams Ale & Cider House, 22-24, Artillery Lane, Devonshire Square, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, Middlesex, England, E1 7LS, United Kingdom

And somewhere in the “City of London”

https://h20.atownsend.org.uk/nominatim/search?q=51.51509,-0.09330
Commerzbank, 30, Gresham Street, Bank, City of London, Middlesex, England, EC2V 7PG, United Kingdom

Alas, there are problems where both older and newer parts of the address overlap. This address is in the historic county of Surrey, but that isn’t getting returned:

https://h20.atownsend.org.uk/nominatim/search?q=51.474537,-0.157530
142, Battersea Park Road, Falcon Estate, Clapham Junction, London Borough of Wandsworth, London, England, SW11 4LT, United Kingdom

And similarly in Barnoldswick (the source of the “B” in Rolls Royce aero engine names such as “RB211”), somewhere historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire

https://h20.atownsend.org.uk/nominatim/search?q=53.924692,%20-2.172959
Skipton Road, Barnoldswick, Earby, Borough of Pendle, Yorkshire, England, BB18 6HJ, United Kingdom

it would surely be possible, by special-casing a few more expressions in a few more areas, to work around these last two issues, but this isn’t a serious suggestion for “how a geocoder should be set up”, just a whimsical demonstration that it’s possible to achieve radically different results without understanding in any way how Nominatim does what it does, just installing it as per the instructions. A more sensible but less whimsical solution might be to use ceremonial counties, although currently in OSM there are some gaps.

I notice that there’s a session at SOTM EU in Dundee in November presented by the main developer of Nominatim “It’s traditional - Boundaries and Places in the UK” which sounds like it’s addressing exactly this sort of problem. Should be interesting…

(photo from Geograph, cc by SA)

– ENGLISH BELOW

Lição bilíngue criada para a oficina sobre mapeamento de caminhos (ways) no OpenStreetMap - PT | EN

A oficina que foi realizada no dia 18 de setembro de 2025, 100% ao vivo e online, é um oferecimento da empresa IVIDES DATA.

Link para a lição bilíngue - PT | EN (3,9 MB) - PDF

O certificado de realização será enviado a quem completar satisfatoriamente uma prática de mapeamento, conforme consta nos últimos slides do PDF disponibilizado. NOVO PRAZO: 01-10-2025.

Dados do mapa | (c) Contribuidores do OpenStreetMap.  

Vídeo da oficina: canal IVIDES no YouTube

IVIDES DATA® é uma marca registrada. Contato: ivides [at] ivides.org | https://ivides.org

This lesson was created for the workshop on mapping ways in OpenStreetMap - PT | EN

The workshop was held 100% online, on September 18th, 2025, and is offered by IVIDES DATA.

Link to the workshop lesson - PT | EN (3.9 MB) - PDF

A certificate of completion will be sent to those who successfully complete a mapping exercise, as described in the last slides of the PDF provided. New deadline: 10-01-2025

Map Data | (c) OpenStreetMap contributors.  

Video of the workshop: canal IVIDES no YouTube

IVIDES DATA® is a registered trademark. To keep contact: ivides [at] ivides.org | https://ivides.org

If there’s one thing people who know me will say, it’s that I’m a proud Lokeraar through and through. The history of Lokeren, and the way the city keeps changing, has always fascinated me.

It all started in 2019 when I began editing Lokeren’s Wikipedia page. I wanted it to be more than just a dry article—I wanted it to reflect the city’s character with accurate and engaging information. After two years of expanding and polishing, I felt I had done my part there, and I started looking for other ways to put Lokeren on the map.

That’s when I discovered OpenStreetMap in 2021. My first edit was just a tiny stream in Lokeren. But from that small start, it turned into a real passion. Before long, I was mapping everything: trees, bike paths, parking lots, even new buildings as they appeared.

Now, four years later, I can proudly say the mission has been a success so far. But it doesn’t stop here—Lokeren keeps growing, and so does my map. And honestly, that’s the best part: there’s always something new to add, and always another story to tell about my hometown.

This is the story of how I mapped the islands off the west coast of the Korean Peninsula. The story began on July 24th (two months ago). I thought long and hard about what mark I should leave on cartography, what was within my capabilities? And the task that seemed feasible to me was to map the islands of South Korea. TTheir number is limited, and the territory between them is much smaller than on the mainland. So, I realized it was a realistic task. All that remained was to find a way to start. I needed not the smallest, but not the largest island either, something that would be a great start. And so I selected the islands of the 영흥면: 영흥도, 선재도, 측도, 부도 and about a dozen more less significant ones.

I did all the work using an ID editor. My skills at the beginning were extremely mediocre, but I learned a lot along the way.

선재도 Island

Unfortunately, when I started working on the islands, I didn’t realize I’d have to write a report in the future. So I didn’t think to save an image of how the area was mapped before my intervention. Regardless, I got the job done surprisingly quickly.

To the west of 선재도 lies 측도 Island. It’s popularly known as one of the Moses Islands. The western coast of the Korean Peninsula is quite shallow, so the appearance of the area is significantly affected by the tides. Twice a day, when the tide goes out, a hiking trail opens to 측도 Island. Locals like to challenge themselves to walk the trail to the island and back before the tide comes in.

Historically, all the islands discussed today were sparsely populated. People lived here as early as the Iron Age, before the emergence of the first Korean proto-states. But there was never any significant activity here. The population engaged in fishing, shellfish collection, and trade with the mainland. This has generally continued almost to the present day. Major changes occurred only in 2000, when the 선재대교 Bridge was built to the island of 선재도. A year later, the 영흥대교 Bridge was built between 선재도 and 영흥도. This gave the islands a pedestrian connection to the mainland, significantly increasing the local population.

The fishing village in the south of the island has transformed into a small settlement that welcomes visiting travelers with fishermen’s cafes. Here, you can also sign up for shellfish collection and a fish-cutting workshop.

In the south, the island’s territory has been significantly expanded, filling the sea with land. Now there’s active construction and a large number of boarding houses. Mostly older men who enjoy fishing come to the island. But some boarding houses are also convenient for young families with children.

영흥도 Island

영흥도 island is on a whole other scale. It’s home to three fairly large villages, two schools, its own water treatment facility, several beaches, dozens of popular fishing spots, the same number of campsites, 12 Christian churches, and one Buddhist temple. And, most importantly, it’s home to one of South Korea’s largest coal-fired power plants. But more on that later.

The southeast of the island is the only port and the center of public life. Almost all the available shops, educational centers, and other amenities are located here. Buses from the mainland also arrive here.

If you travel a little west from the port, you’ll immediately reach the island’s administrative center. It houses the mayor’s office, library, and community hall. Nearby, an old, rusty ship stands on the pier—a reminder of the civil war. When North Korea invaded the South, with the support of China and the USSR, they were able to conquer almost the entire Korean peninsula in a relatively short time, reaching as far as Busan. Only the timely arrival of UN forces, largely comprised of the US Army, saved South Korea. They changed the course of the war with their landing at Incheon, attacking the enemy from the west bank and reaching Seoul in a couple of days. Many know this story. But few know that the landing would not have been so successful if, two or three days earlier, South Korean guerrilla groups had not cleared the islands from which the North would have been able to spot the approaching armies. On a nearby hill there is a monument dedicated to these events, and the ship on the pier is a patrol boat of the «Chamsuri» class: 퇴역함 참수리 263호, such as those that guarded the Korean border after the end of the war.

In the northeast of the island is Simnipo Beach. It’s a great place to relax, stay in one of the many guesthouses, take the kids to a theme park, and see the famous and rare Hornbeam tree, a plant in the Betulaceae family, found primarily in Korea and Japan. In this place, right next to the beach, a whole grove of these trees has been preserved, creating an incredible landscape against the backdrop of the sea.

A little to the west of this spot, you’ll find another interesting natural feature: grouper Rock. I believe it was named so because of its visual resemblance. Now, a steady stream of tourist fishermen flock here in hopes of catching that very same grouper.

And yet, the most important and challenging thing to map on this island is the coal-fired power plant. The main problem is that it’s a military facility, and its plans aren’t publicly available, meaning I could only rely on satellite imagery and a personal visit.

Almost the entire island’s population works for the coal plant. It supplies about 20% of the capital region’s electricity and, incidentally, is also the source of 50% of the carbon dioxide emissions for neighboring cities. A large landfill used to be located nearby, but it was eventually closed due to public pressure. Environmentalists regularly demand that the Korean government close down or at least do something about this facility, but as far as I know, the government plans to expand it. To the east of the coal plant is a power park and an electric town for staff. The entire area southeast of the power plant is planned for an even larger public park, the purpose of which will be to reassure the public of the plant’s environmental safety.

In conclusion, I’d like to tell you a legend that originated in ancient times on this island. It’s called “Unlucky 김장사”:

Unlucky 김장사

In ancient times, people often went to war and killed their neighbors. The strong killed the weak, and this was perfectly normal. But the inhabitants of the 영흥도 island weren’t content with this fate. The sea certainly protected them from most external threats, but how could they combat the power within? So the islanders devised a way to nip evil in the bud: they began killing all children who were born strong and capable of becoming warriors. In this way, the islanders wanted to protect themselves from a future tyrant. But when a healthy and robust boy was born into one of the families, his parents took pity on him and decided not to kill him, but simply cut off his arms. The boy survived, but was not grateful to his parents for such a life. He couldn’t understand why his parents condemned him to a life of torment without arms. Once he was fully grown, he left his native island and headed north. Rumor has it that he became a ferryman, ferrying travelers between the islands. It was from him that the people of the mainland heard this story. The inhabitants of one island wanted to defeat the evil born of power, but they couldn’t think of anything better than to use both power and evil to achieve their goal.

부도 Island

The last thing I’d like to mention is 부도 Island. It’s quite small and uninhabited, but interesting. Its other unofficial name is Goblin Island [도깨비 섬]. It’s hard to say how many goblins actually live here, but there are certainly a lot of rare hawks, listed as endangered. Perhaps so many of these birds of prey live here because they feed on goblins. There’s also a lighthouse here, which is over 120 years old.

To sum it up: after two months of work, I think I know more about this island than its inhabitants. :) I looked under every rock, tree, and fence. I managed to create a very accurate map of the area in a short period of time, even though I had no previous experience with this kind of work. And I don’t plan to stop. I’ve already chosen an even larger island nearby, so I’ll see you in about three months. Safe travels!

P.S. Sorry for my broken English. It’s not my native language, so writing in it is extremely tiring. I’d like to write much more, but frankly, I’m really tired :)

Hello all! My name is Pablo Brasero Moreno, a software engineer and long-time enthusiast of Open Source Software and Open Data. I am honoured and grateful to have been selected by the OSMF as Core Software Engineer, thanks the funds provided by the Sovereign Tech Agency.

At a personal level, I grew up in Seville, Spain. In 2004 I moved to the UK and, after living for many years in London, England, now I’m established in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In my own time I explore Northern Ireland with my family, read sci-fi novels, listen to heavy metal music, attend concerts, play bass guitar (badly), and try to learn languages (even more badly, currently attempting Mandarin Chinese). Did I mention I have a B1 certificate in Esperanto?

I have been involved in some capacity with Open Source Software since I first installed Linux in my computer in 1998, first contributing with Spanish translations (over email!), and later taking part in the OSS explosion brought by the creation of GitHub. I have worked with many technology stacks over my career, but for a long time the primary one has been Ruby on Rails. I have used Ruby in many environments, from helping clients bootstrap businesses out of napkin sketches, to participating in the architecture and growth of banking applications. Since 2019 I am a freelancer, and I cannot but feel so lucky to have been available at the time when OSMF announced this position.

Without being a huge contributor to OSM, I was aware of it at least as early as 2015, when I made my first edits while visiting Mexico. In the last couple of years I have started mapping playgrounds, as that strikes a balance between my interest to contribute and my family’s patience to wait for me while I fiddle on my phone.

I am not here to dictate what features should exist in the the OSM website, or what specific issues should be fixed. I am here to learn about the needs of the community, relieve the workload of the volunteers, support contributors new and old, provide reviews and guidance on software engineering questions, and overall help bring our collective vision of OSM to fruition.

You will be hearing from me soon, in the form of GitHub comments/issues/PRs, working with Minh Nguyễn with news and summaries related to development of the platform, talking to many of you directly in order to understand your points of view, and generally anywhere where I can help.

I cannot wait to working with and for y’all!

Background

In 2023, New Brunswick (Canada) underwent a province-wide restructuring of their municipal boundaries. This consisted of 77 Incorporated Municipalities and 12 Unincorporated Rural Districts. Between 2023 and 2025, only a small handful of these boundaries were actually imported into OSM. Thus, I took it upon myself to begin what was my largest project ever, a full import of the updated boundaries across the province.

I saw it fit to write up a post summarizing the work that was done, along with some of the rationales for certain tagging methods used in this project, in order to maintain consistency both now and into the future. It should be noted that this was not an automated import, every kilometer of boundary was manually reviewed. The data used was from GeoNB, under the Open Government License – New Brunswick.

Pre-Import Phase/Admin Level Restructuring

When I started this project, New Brunswick’s existing boundary data was a complete mess, some larger cities had admin_level=6 boundaries, while other incorporated municipalities were tagged admin_level=8, and parishes were sharing admin_level=6, leading to overlaps. For instance, Saint-François Parish and Haut-Madawaska were both tagged admin_level=6, despite them occupying the same geographical area.

To fix this problem, I decided to shift all Parish boundaries to admin_level=8, and assign admin_level=6 to all municipal boundaries. The new admin level hierarchy is logical because Parishes are not incorporated government entities and have no modern-day purpose. Furthermore, it more closely resembles data in other provinces in Canada (such as Alberta, Quebec, and Nova Scotia), which prioritize admin_level=6 for municipal districts. Both the New Brunswick wiki as well as the Canada admin level wiki pages were updated to reflect these changes.

Below are some examples of the admin_level tagging schema before and after my updates:

Example 1 [Before]:

• admin_level=4 = New Brunswick
• admin_level=5 = Madawaska County
• admin_level=6 = Saint-François Parish
• admin_level=6 = Haut-Madawaska (Municipality)

Example 1 [After]:

• admin_level=4 = New Brunswick
• admin_level=5 = Madawaska County
• admin_level=6 = Haut-Madawaska (Municipality)
• admin_level=8 = Saint-François Parish

Example 2 [Before]:

• admin_level=4 = New Brunswick
• admin_level=5 = Queens County
• admin_level=6 = Gagetown Parish
• admin_level=8 = Village of Gagetown (Municipality)

Example 2 [After]:

• admin_level=4 = New Brunswick
• admin_level=5 = Queens County
• admin_level=6 = Village of Arcadia (Municipality)
• admin_level=8 = Gagetown Parish

Import Workflow

The import process consisted of importing the shapefile data directly from GeoNB, One municipality at a time, and downloading all data within a few metres of the new boundary. This revealed any pre-existing boundaries (County, Parish, and Village boundaries). Any areas where the new municipal boundary was directly overlapped with existing boundaries, it was split and joined to them. As such, boundary members may be part of county, parish, and municipal boundary relations (or any combination of those) simultaneously. After each new Municipality was imported, I removed any old village boundaries & relations which no longer have legal bearing.

While importing the data, I also fixed many instances of pre-existing data quality issues, particularly with overlapping parish boundaries. In some cases, I noted up to 3 different boundaries all overlapping together. After meticulous work across the province, virtually all of these issues have been resolved.

Keeping Boundary Members Neutral

Another issue that came up during my work was the tagging of individual boundary members (the actual ways that are members of the boundary relations). Most of the time, these labels only referred to one side of the region they were splitting. For example, boundary members surrounding Sackville Parish were all labelled “Sackville Parish”, despite the adjacent parishes (eg. Dorchester Parish) sharing the same member.

Mapping best practice would be to label them as “Sackville Parish – Dorchester Parish” to indicate that the boundary seperates two different regions, however in many cases these boundary members were simultaneously part of County and Municipal level boundaries, making this tagging overly complex.

As a result, I decided that it would be easiest to simply leave the boundary members untagged altogether, as their membership within the boundary relations already provides all relevant data. The only exception I made was to First Nation Reserves. Furthermore, leaving these boundary members untagged makes future modifications far easier, as the only things that need to be changed are the boundary relations themselves.

Admin Levels on Coastal Islands

Something peculiar I discovered during my work was certain coastal islands having been tagged with admin_level=6, admin_level=8, and admin_level=9. It’s unclear to me why exactly these boundaries were added to begin with, because these random islands have no administrative structure that would lend itself to requiring an admin level. In my opinion, this is superfluous data that should be removed, however for the short-term, I changed all of them to admin_level=9 to maintain consistency, and avoid overlaps with other administrative regions.

Machias Seal Island

Machias Seal Island is disputed territory with the United States. The government of New Brunswick acknowledges this island as being within Grand Manan Parish, Southwest Rural District, Charlotte County. I did add these administrative regions to the Island as per the GeoNB dataset, however I’m not 100% sure if this is mapping best practice with respect to disputed territory on OSM. To me, It would be equally appropriate to include the county and municipality level information from the United States side, but that decision would have to be made by someone other than myself.

Rural Districts

It should be noted that while New Brunswick’s 12 Rural Districts aren’t technically incorporated Municipalities, they occupy the same geographical/administrative tier, and therefore have also been assigned admin_level=6. This could potentially be changed if somebody thought differently, however my rationale on this was based on Alberta’s admin level structure which tags everything admin_level=6 even for those regions which are technically unincorporated (eg. Special Areas, Improvement Districts).

National Parks & Protected Natural Areas

Generally speaking, I left most of these boundaries separated from the municipal boundaries in order to avoid needlessly complicating things.

Federal Constituency Boundaries

Federal Constituency Boundaries were joined to Municipal level boundary members wherever I came across them, however I did not do a detailed review of these province-wide, and some adjustments may still be required.

Bilingual & Wikidata Tags

As part of this project, all Counties, Municipalities, Parishes, and First Nations Reserves were brought into compliance with the bilingual tagging schema (name:en, name:fr, and name= corresponding to the language most used in that particular region). Additionally, Wikidata tags were added to all 152 parishes, and website links added to all municipalities.

Conclusion

Closing the chapter on this 3 month long project is bittersweet, Despite being very tedious at times, it was a great opportunity to improve my mapping skills and get to know New Brunswick in great detail from the top down. If you would like to view the boundaries on Overpass Turbo, you can use the following queries:

To view all Municipalities & Rural Districts:

[out:json][timeout:25];
// gather results
nwr["type"="boundary"]["admin_level"="6"]["name:en"]["name:fr"]({{bbox}});
// print results
out geom;

To view all Parishes:

[out:json][timeout:25];
// gather results
nwr["type"="boundary"]["admin_level"="8"]["name:en"]["name:fr"]({{bbox}});
// print results
out geom;

Do not hesitate to contact me with questions, comments, or concerns. Cheers :)

97394 addresses completed.

NY

Salut,sunt Darius si sunt un nou editor aici daca fac ceva gresit va rog sa imi scrieti pe chat. Multumesc!

As I’m interested in pedestrian infrastructure, I asked myself what percentage of all sidewalks in Germany has already been mapped.

It is difficult to answer this question because I do not know the total number of sidewalks in Germany. However, it is possible to change the question slightly to make it easier to answer: How many streets in Germany contain information about the presence of sidewalks?

This is easier to answer, because we can assume that all streets of Germany have already been mapped. Therefore, to answer the question, we just have to count the streets that contain the desired information.

Sidewalk tags

Currently, four tags are in use for mapping sidewalks: sidewalk, sidewalk:left, sidewalk:right and sidewalk:both. The tag sidewalk was introduced around 2010 and is still widespread, accounting for around 80% of all sidewalk tags:

The other three tags were added in January 2021. Normally sidewalk:left and sidewalk:right should be used together to provide a complete view of both sides of the street. The tag sidewalk:both is just a shortcut when both tags have the same value.¹

Speaking of values: These three tags can take the values no, yes and separate, meaning in order: There is no sidewalk, there is a sidewalk, and there is a sidewalk which is mapped as a separate highway.

In addition to these three values, the sidewalk tag can take the values both, right, left and a deprecated synonym of no called none. Only the values both and no privide a clear picture of the intended meaning when mapping.

The values separate and yes do not distinguish between sidewalks on both sides and a sidewalk on one side without specifing the side.

Likewise, the values right and left are ambiguous: They obviously state something about the sidewalk on one side, but they may or may not imply what is on the other side of the street.

To make sense of this, I started thinking in terms of sidewalk:left and sidewalk:right. Unlike the other two tags, these give information on exactly one real object. If the sidewalk tag is given, mapping of both and no to sidewalk:left and sidewalk:right is straightforward.

If the sidewalk has one of the values left and right, I use them to define one of the two tags, leaving the other one undefined.

If the value is separate or yes, I’m using a new value, maybe, for the sake of counting.

Finally, I consider the data invalid whenever a sidewalk or sidewalk:both tag is present alongside any of the other tags. (Fortunately this happens very seldom.)

The Art of Counting

I ended up with the following diagram, using this. (red: yes, green: no, yellow: separate, cyan: maybe, purple: invalid)

More than 90% are missing? I expected a large number, but this is unbelievable. On second thought I realised I had made a mistake: I counted the information on sidewalks for all highways, but this cannot be expected for many of them, such as highway=footway.

So I recounted, this time only considering highways with value primary, primary_link, secondary, secondary_link, tertiary, tertiary_link, residential and unclassified. This time I got the following:

This looks a little bit better, but it still isn’t, what I was looking for. After thinking about it some more, I realised that I’m actually interested in the number of sidewalks in urban areas. Here I counted everything outside of town too.

Unfortunately, OSM does not provide direct information on urban areas.² But luckily, I wrote a rather complicated program a few years ago to estimate these areas using other OSM data. Reusing the results of this program, I created the following diagram:

It’s not much better. About 2/3 are still not mapped. I made another mistake, though: I counted OSM objects instead of street kilometres. This means that a very short piece of a street counts the same as a very long one. I therefore ran the program again, this time measuring the lengths of the ways, and I got this final diagram:

The result is worse than what I got before: 3/4 of all urban sidewalks have not been mapped yet!

History of the Sidewalk Tag

Is the mapping of sidewalks stalled? Or did it just begin recently? I took some OSM data snapshots from the past to get some idea how the mapping of sidewalks developed over the years. This is the result:

It’s clearly visible that the introduction of the three new sidewalk tags in 2021 caused an increase in sidewalk mapping, but this increase already starts to decline again, long before we got near 100%.

Missing Feedback

Well, the question now is, why are still so few sidewalks mapped? I’ve got a theory which, I think, is quite convincing: Mappers don’t receive any feedback when they map sidewalks.³ OSM Carto (the main map) doesn’t show this information, nor any of the other maps featured on the OSM main page.

Also, pedestrian routers do not rely on these tags, because so many are missing; they also route on streets without them. Thus one doesn’t notice if the tag is there or not. It’s a vicious circle.

What we need, is some feedback. Ideally, OSM Carto would show this information, but I fear, this will not happen. The goal of this map isn’t to show all mapped features, but to provide an all-purpose map.

A pedestrian map on the main page would also be great, because there isn’t one, and it would make sense to show the sideway tags on such a map. However, I’m not aware of any effort to generate such a map. It might take too long until this happens.

So, at least those of us, who want to add this information need something else. As far as I know, Overpass Turbo is updated in realtime, which makes it a perfect instrument for immediate feedback. Thus I created a query: Overpass Turbo query showing missing sidewalks. You can use this query on your favourite places to see where sidewalks have not been (fully) mapped yet.

Here an example showing the area around Bad Godesberg in Bonn:

Some Additional Pointers

• I published the program I used for counting on GitHub.

• I started writing this blog post about a year ago, but for unknown reasons, I left it unpublished until now. In the meantime, Dr. Roland Olbricht gave a talk on this subject on FOSSGIS 2025 conference (in German). He too realised that information on sidewalks is often missing. However, I do not agree with all of his conclusions, particularly his view that the value separate should no longer be used.⁴

1. I dislike the use of sidewalk:both, because I strongly prefer 1:1 mappings between real objects and OSM data. The tag sidewalk:both is a 2:1 mapping that increases the workload for consumers of the data. However, it is still much better than using the problematic sidewalk tag. ↩

2. Actually, the idea of “urban areas” is a mistake in itself. Imagine two streets crossing with a bridge. It is possible for one to be urban and the other not. It would be better to decide for each street separately if it is urban or not. I think, this approach is also not easy to program and I haven’t found the time to give it a try yet. Thus I’m sticking with urban areas - it’s better than nothing. ↩

3. If you map sidewalks as separate footways they will appear in OSM Carto. However, the corresponding sidewalk tag may be missing or incorrect. ↩

4. In his talk, Roland gives an example of a mapper misunderstanding the meaning of sidewalk=separate, and states that there are more such examples, rendering the value useless. He recommends using foot=use_sidewalk instead. Unfortunately with foot=use_sidewalk alone, you still do not know, where the sidewalk is nor whether it has been mapped separately or not. (But of course, as an addition foot=use_sidewalk is fine.) However, this information is important for real pedestrian routing (with “real” I mean routing on the sidewalks instead of routing in the middle of the street). In my opinion, the meaning of the value separate is quite clear: there is a sidewalk and it has been mapped separately. In the counter-example, the mapper used this value for a footway that ran parallel to the street but was not a sidewalk. ↩

Artificial Intelligence OpenAI Maps4 and finance. Things are progressing beautifully.

I am telling it what to do in English, and it’s writing the tags for me and making the edit. I will review everything it does and not do anything with it that I wouldn’t do by hand (but more tediously).

On September 20th, 2025, the Oyomappers Team had an amazing time participating in a map and clean-up event sponsored by the Humanitarian Open Street Map Team (Hot). We used Chatmap to help us with the exercise, and it was truly impactful!

During the cleanup at Ajegunle Market in Oyo, Oyo State, Nigeria, the atmosphere was filled with joy. The community was so grateful, and we felt their warmth as they expressed their appreciation and prayed for us. It was a wonderful experience to be part of something so positive!

This afternoon, while pondering and daydreaming about seriously quitting OSM for real, I ventured into the land of Wikimapia.

Then I stumbled upon a conversation between high-ranking admins over there.

“Why did you delete a number of TNB sub-stations from the map? Don’t you think those tags were useful, to some people at least? I think the user(s) who initially created those tags put a lot of effort in detailing the model nos., etc. for some of the sub-stations. Thanks.”

“The TNB sub stations is not a place. It just an OBJECT just like small bridges, security guard post, small jetty etc. Different with a PLACE such as Pulau Pinang Bridge or any big bridges, police station or a port such as Port Kelang. As you can see there are few users that like to tag a small roadside stall and a small public toilet. That also is in the list for deletion. You must know to differentiate what can be tag and what can’t.”

“I was under the impression that anything permanent of some importance (except personal houses) could be tagged. If that’s the case, people shouldn’t be tagging ATM machines, telco towers, transmission towers, etc. To be honest, I disagree with you on this point as TNB substations are permanent and important to some people as I mentioned before.”

“You may disagree with me but TNB sub stations is not an important objects for WM users. It just like tagging a bus stops and taxi stands if you know what I mean”

Well, maybe I should stay in OpenStreetMap.

Jokes aside, I’m quite surprised that Wikimapia is still active today. I still see several Wikimapia mappers still doing dedicated micromapping in their respective neighborhoods.

Then, I tried cross-checking Wikimapia’s entries with both Google Maps and OpenStreetMap. Surprisingly, there are some recent entries that exist in Wikimapia but are not found in either Google Maps or OpenStreetMap. When I verified them through publicly available street view images, it turned out they were actually correct. Cool.

So, it turns out that dedicated micromappers don’t exist solely in OpenStreetMap. They are also still active today in both Wikimapia and Google Maps (through Google Local Guides program), each with different “jurisdictions” regarding who has the authority to delete or reject contributions.

In OpenStreetMap, anyone can delete someone else’s contribution, i guess.

In Wikimapia, there are “elected local administrators” who can perform higher-level editing (such as road mapping and place classifications) and handle deletions.

In Google Maps, every edit is vetted by Google staff, I think.

So, if in the future you need a detailed, updated map of a certain region, there’s a chance that a dedicated local micromapper has contributed, whether in OpenStreetMap, Wikimapia, or Google Maps.

“So… should we convert dedicated Wikimapia micromappers to OpenStreetMap?”

Umm… I can’t answer that question yet, haha.

“How about the other way around? Encourage OpenStreetMap mappers to try Wikimapia.”

If you want a bit of fresh air, sure. Here’s a quick rundown of what you need to know:

• You start at the “beginner” level. At this point, your editing privileges are quite limited—you can only add places, not new roads. Add more places, gain experience points, and level up.
• To add a new place, draw the polygon, add the title, description, tags, and address. Everything here is a “way,” unlike OSM where you have nodes, ways, and relations. The title and description are very “wiki-page-like,” with separate entries for each language. The address part is special because it works like a category tag in Wikipedia/MediaWiki. It automatically groups “pages” into a hierarchy of addresses, from roads up through administrative boundaries, countries, and eventually the world.

• The tagging system isn’t based on key:value like in OSM but uses simple, single-valued tags, such as “hotel,” “restaurant,” etc. For each place, you can add multiple tags.
• The atomic unit of contribution is not a “changeset” like in OSM, but simply a “place.” As a result, browsing someone’s contributions on Wikimapia is more enjoyable, since it looks like “traces of places this user has mapped,” rather than just “a list of changesets with vague descriptions.”
• Since it’s essentially a “vector tile” map, it offers a high-resolution browsing experience. You can zoom in to the maximum and see everything in the database. Contrast that with OpenStreetMap’s Carto map, where (1) even at max zoom you can’t see every detail, since some icons “collide” if they’re too close, and (2) not every tag is rendered, so plenty of detail remains hidden in the database.
• Each “place” has its own dedicated page where anyone can add photos and comments.
• Each city has its own [dedicated subdomain], summarizing everything there and updated every 10 minutes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38090473

“One thing seemed a bit strange to me. It was the absence of initial clues on the Web about such a big local object.”

“OSM approach is different: objects are presented as they are, and can’t collect arbitrary comments, discussions, photos and other data (apart from regular edit descriptions). It is essentially a tool to make a static snapshot of current state of certain types of objects, which is fine for a map, but does not help people interested in local history.”

“Why haven’t similar communities in other big cities across the world created similar sites (“own/better Wikimapias”) to collect information on everything they find interesting in their neighborhoods?”

Well, I’ve been thinking about this problem for quite a long time. Actually, I built similar web apps several years ago to address this exact issue, but the funding ran out and they failed to reach the critical mass needed to build a self-sustaining online community to move forward. So I shelved the idea, but it still makes me curious, even now.

One potential immediate solution is to use the OSM Wiki to explain “the story part” behind each OSM object. That seems quite feasible. However, if this trend continues, it could add some infrastructural burden to the OSM Wiki (since its de facto raison d’être is simply for tagging documentation, right?). But if the quality of the wiki is good enough and worth preserving, I think it could be welcomed as “a new way to contribute” to OSM.

One of the trickiest challenges in OSM is when a river (or any linear water feature) doubles as a regional or administrative boundary.

Rivers shift course over time; floods, erosion, and meanders, while boundaries often remain legally fixed. The result? Misalignments, overlapping lines, or confusing gaps on our maps.

For many contributors, editing such overlaps is daunting. Boundaries are sensitive, technically complex, and mistakes can cause big issues. Yet, leaving them mismatched affects disaster planning, legal clarity, and overall map quality.

My Question to Experienced Mappers 🙏

How do you decide whether to follow the legal boundary or the current river course?

Rivers don’t wait. Boundaries don’t move. But as mappers, we can bridge the gap. I’d love to hear your experiences and solutions!

Qwajo OSM

11/09/2025-17/09/2025

Mapping

• Comments are requested on these proposals:
  • role=request_stop to mark stops as request stops along route relations.
  • beauty=* to indicate a hair salon’s specialisation in women, men, or mixed clientele.
  • votive=* and votive_offering=* to more accurately record votive sites and the type of objects sacrificed.

Mapping campaigns

• Saarpfalz-Touristik is planning ► to hold a mapathon on Thursday 9 October to update hiking data in Saarpfalz, Germany.

Community

• Daniel Capilla passed ► through the town of Almogía (Spain) to photograph three recently inaugurated Stolpersteine (memorial=stolperstein), which are commemorative cobblestones that honour the victims of Nazi concentration camps.
• fghj735 explained how to use the infrared imagery provided by the European Space Agency to aid in landuse mapping.
• Henry Bellick explained the concepts of latitude and longitude, which are essential for map reading.
• Ed, from OpenCage, interviewed long-time OSM contributor Martijn van Exel about the Meet Your Mappers app.
• MarcoR saw that OpenStreetMap had once again reached the milestone of 10 million registered accounts. He notes that this number had already been exceeded earlier this year and in 2023, but had dropped, likely due to the banning of spam accounts. Only about 23% of the accounts have made any edits. If one counted all account IDs, including deleted or banned ones, the number would more than double.
• Frederik Ramm, of Geofabrik, announced the ramping up of the Geofabrik download server infrastructure, while also appealing to users to ‘download responsibly’, noting that in the past there have been several cases where irresponsible downloading disrupted the service for others.
• Triggered by a blog article about what a centenarian and 14-year-long Wikipedia contributor can teach us, Christian Quest wondered if we have any centenarian contributors to OpenStreetMap. Do you know of any?

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• OSMF board will take place on Thursday 25 September 2025 at 13:30 UTC in this video room.

  The topics are:

  • Voting for Chairperson
  • Voting for Treasurer
  • Voting for Secretary
  • Voting for non-officer roles
  • Administrative: Approval of previous minutes, Circular Resolutions
  • Any other business
  • Guest comments or questions
• The OpenStreetMap Awards 2025 are now open for voting. Help to recognise exceptional OpenStreetMap contributors for the past year. You can vote for each of the 7 categories. Don’t forget to hit ‘Submit my votes’ at the bottom of the page. The voting will end on Tuesday 30 September, right before the State of the Map 2025 conference, where the winners will be announced.
• Grant Slater has invited you to a meeting on Saturday 27 September at 13:00 UTC (14:00 BST), for a short technical introduction to how the OpenStreetMap.org Operations Team runs the project’s infrastructure. He will cover its architecture and tooling, how the test and deploy changes are realised, and practical ways you can contribute to the project (SRE, networking, Chef/OpenTofu, CI, monitoring, etc).
• [1] Christoph Hormann argued that the formal members of the OpenStreetMap Foundation are no longer meaningfully involved, with real influence shifting toward long-term participants such as working group members and staff.

Local chapter news

• OpenStreetMap US and Mapillary have launched the US edition of CompleteTheMap, a challenge rewarding contributors for collecting street-level imagery to enhance map quality.
• FOSSGIS held ► the second online networking meeting for the FOSSGIS community on Wednesday 10 September, where 14 participants gathered to discuss various topics related to GIS, such as the concept of the digital twin and XPlanung (the German spatial planning data standard). The next networking meeting will take place on Wednesday 10 December.

Education

• IVIDES DATA is offering a series of three workshops on mapping in OpenStreetMap with the most popular editors, taught in Portuguese. The meetings are being broadcast on the IVIDES YouTube channel and no registration is required. Participants will receive a certificate of participation after submitting their mapping results to the organisation. The first workshop was held on Thursday 18 September and two more workshops are scheduled for 25 September and 1 October, with sessions using JOSM.
• Anne-Karoline Distel has made a video on building a chamfer stop database in uMap, while also introducing several of the new features of the platform.

OSM research

• HeiGIT reported that researchers have modelled time-dependent solar exposure for the entire pedestrian network of Heidelberg, Germany, by combining high-resolution DEM/DSM building and vegetation data with OpenStreetMap road data. Results show that significant reductions in pedestrian heat exposure are possible with minimal detours, though some areas lack shaded alternatives.

Maps

• Ralph Straumann, of Spatialist – geospatial news, reviewed Basemapkit, an open-source collection of basemap styles based on the Protomaps OSM pmtiles builds.
• Please Try My App presents an interactive map rating the liveability of US cities, including assessments of things to do, safety, and infrastructure.

OSM in action

• On Thursday 25 September in Pawtucket, Eric Theise and Ed Osborn will create a synaesthetic art experience by blending improvised digital map projections with live electronics and soundscapes.

Open Data

• Civio has won a landmark case in Spain’s Supreme Court forcing the government to release the source code of BOSCO, the algorithm used to decide social welfare eligibility, marking a major victory for transparency and digital democracy.

Software

• On Saturday 27 September, JOSM will turn 20. JOSM’s first code commit was made in 2005 by imi, laying the foundation for the widely used OpenStreetMap editor.
• Cardinal Maps is a privacy-friendly open-source maps app for Android offering fast online and offline navigation without ads or tracking, with support for self-hosted map services.
• Soen has developed Tracy, a tool that helps quickly update maps in your area.
• Jean-Marc Liotier has provided Isosmfar, an interactive tool for visualising OpenStreetMap data fields such as density or distance, with customisable parameters and export options.
• Shoogle is a community-driven directory that displays up-to-date shopping options across the US using OpenStreetMap data and encourages users to help improve coverage.
• TIGER King is a lightweight web tool for efficiently cleaning up outdated TIGER road data in the US, streamlining the addition of tags inluding surface and lanes, removing legacy import tags, and allowing quick edits directly to OpenStreetMap.

Programming

• Aselnigu explained how to draw circles on web maps to implement a geolocation feature that shows the user’s current location and the location’s accuracy.
• GuildMasterDev has created Cartographer, a privacy-focused desktop app for interactively using OpenStreetMap with marker placement, route visualisation, and multiple map styles, all without needing location permissions.
• lpf452 explained how to perform an automated mass edit to add the name:zh and name:zh-Hant tags using C++.

Releases

• Jonathan Lurie has worked on the Basemapkit project to add some mountains. You can see the demonstration and also access the repository.
• Marc Tobias announced that Nominatim now provides information on where a point of interest can be entered and exited, rather than only returning its centre point.
• osm2pgsql 2.2 has added a locator feature for efficient region detection of OSM objects and new callbacks, enabling the handling of deleted objects for advanced data processing.
• Organic Maps has introduced a redesigned route planning screen and the ability to view OpenStreetMap description tags on iOS, alongside various improvements and bug fixes across both platforms.

Did you know that …

• … PTNA performs daily analyses of how completely and accurately public transport is mapped in OpenStreetMap? PTNA includes support for GTFS data.

Other “geo” things

• IVIDES Publishing is seeking chapter proposals in Portuguese for the second volume of Case Studies in Collaborative and Participatory Mapping, which will be released in 2026. The book has a section on mapping with OpenStreetMap, and your proposals can be made via an online form. Participants will have three months to submit their original text and the complete list of authors. The chapters will undergo double-blind evaluation.
• Komoot unveiled its updated product roadmap featuring a fresh design, Apple Watch app, community heatmaps, and future additions including dark mode and an AI planning assistant; all driven by user feedback.
• Project Linework is a public library of stylised, hand-drawn vector datasets for maps, offering cartographers creative alternatives to standard line-work styles.

Upcoming Events

Country	Where	Venue	What	When
		Virtual	Mapatón Nacional de México 2025	2025-08-19 – 2025-09-30
	Kiel	KITZ	OSM-Infostand bei den Kieler Linuxtagen	2025-09-19 – 2025-09-20
			OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting	2025-09-19
	Bengaluru	RV University	OSM India MapWalk @ IndiaFOSS	2025-09-19
	Torreón	Universidad Autónoma de La Laguna	Mapeo con OpenStreetMap	2025-09-19 – 2025-09-20
	Essen	Linuxhotel Essen	FOSSGIS-OSM-Communitytreffen im Linuxhotel	2025-09-19 – 2025-09-21
	Bengaluru	NIMHANS Convention Centre	OSM India @ IndiaFOSS 2025	2025-09-19 – 2025-09-20
	Parma	Parma	2025 Parma Mapping party	2025-09-20
	Cork	Digital Arts and Humanities Learning Space @ UCC	OpenStreetMap Ireland Annual General Meeting	2025-09-20
		Atomic Cafe	Social Mapping Sunday: South Perth Foreshore	2025-09-21
	Trento	Impact Hub Trento	2025 Trento Mapathon	2025-09-21
			Missing Maps : Mapathon en ligne – CartONG [fr]	2025-09-22
	London	Meta London Office	HOT/Missing Maps London In-Person Mapathon	2025-09-23
	Hamburg	Hamburg	Hamburger Mapping Spaziergang	2025-09-23
	City of Edinburgh	The Guildford Arms	OSM Edinburgh pub meetup	2025-09-23
	Berlin	Online	OSM-Verkehrswende #70	2025-09-23
		Fabrique des possibles	Réunion OpenStreetMap	2025-09-24
		TRACK Brussels	FOSS4G Belgium	2025-09-25
			[Online] OpenStreetMap Foundation board of Directors – public videomeeting	2025-09-25
	Madrid	Online	Mappy Hour OSM España – Notatón	2025-09-25
	Hannover	Kuriosum	OSM-Stammtisch Hannover	2025-09-25
	Pawtucket	The Map Center	A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations Between Eric Theise & Ed Osborn	2025-09-25
		virtual	[Online] Oficina de mapeamento de áreas no OpenStreetMap com JOSM	2025-09-25
			UN Mappers Mappy Hour	2025-09-26
	Kiel	RBZ Wirtschaft	Workshop „OpenStreetMap“ beim Science Day 2025	2025-09-26
	Düsseldorf	Online bei https://meet.jit.si/OSM-DUS-2025	Düsseldorfer OpenStreetMap-Treffen (online)	2025-09-26
		Universidad Nacional de Luján	Encuentro de la Comunidad de OpenStreetMap de Argentina	2025-09-27 – 2025-09-28
	Metz	L’Arob@ase	Atelier du groupe local de Metz – Septembre 2025	2025-09-27
	Gurgaon	DLF Phase 1 Metro Station	23rd OSM Delhi MapWalk	2025-09-28
	Saint-Étienne	Zoomacom	Rencontre Saint-Étienne et sud Loire	2025-09-29
	Helsinki	Antikvariaatti Sofia	OSM Suomi kartoittajatapaaminen	2025-09-30
	Stuttgart	Stuttgart	Stuttgarter OpenStreetMap-Treffen	2025-10-01
	Madrid	Online	Mappy Hour OSM España	2025-10-02
	Bochum	Das Labor, Alleestraße 50, Bochum	OSM-Treffen in Bochum	2025-10-02
	Quezon City	University of the Philippines Diliman	State of the Map 2025	2025-10-03 – 2025-10-05
	Rapperswil-Jona	OST Campus Rapperswil	17. Mapathon & Mapping Party Rapperswil 2025	2025-10-03
			OSMF Engineering Working Group meeting	2025-10-03
	Amsterdam	TomTom HQ	Maptime Amsterdam: Autumn mapping party	2025-10-03
	नई दिल्ली	Jitsi Meet (online)	OSM India Online (Remote) Mapping Party	2025-10-05

Note:
If you like to see your event here, please put it into the OSM calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM.

This weeklyOSM was produced by Mannivu, MatthiasMatthias, PierZen, Raquel Dezidério Souto, Strubbl, Andrew Davidson, barefootstache, derFred, mcliquid.
We welcome link suggestions for the next issue via this form and look forward to your contributions.