Villages: landuse=allotments or residential?

There is heated dispute in russian OSM forum.
The object of dispute is how to mark village (or hamlet) territory where every family own a plot of cultivated land and living house on it.
We have two different opinions:
First one is based on agricultural use of and private ownership of land and propose to mark it as allotments.
Second one is based on right of permanent residence so it should be marked as residental.
Who is right?

Allotments are generally not lived on and they are usually, but not always, rented to instead of owned by the people who cultivate them.
Residential indicates an area which is primarily used for permanent residence so I’d personally advise the use of that.

However it might be that the type of landuse is too specific to capture with landuse residential. You don’t have use this tagging, you could create your own.

For example landuse=homestead or landuse=smallholding. I don’t know if these render, probably not as I just made them up and they may not even be in use.

An allotment isn’t owned but rented:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/allotment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_%28gardening%29

Not sure if the concept is different in Russia but I’d put it a residential.

Hmm, is it really significant if land is rented or owned? I have no idea how to discover it easy. Ok, i meant “use” or “have” (not concerning any legal status) instead of “own” if it makes much sense.
Is it significant that land is NOT lived? There’s frequent situation that lived and not lived plots are mixed).

So, how to mark urban and rural lived areas (if they are both have to be marked as residental) to distinguish between them?

Is there a need to distinguish?

Areas of permanent residence are areas of permanent residence whether in the city or in the country. However, as I said above, if the character of the landuse is so different from that of residential then you could tag it with something different.

As regards the ownership issue, it’s not really much of an issue whether it’s owned or rented, the primary difference is that, as far as I know, no-one lives on allotments anywhere in the world, or at least aren’t meant to, and it would be really stretching the allotments tag to use it in this way. However, like DaveF, I don’t know if the situation is different in Russia.

It seems to me that if the areas in question are really dense but not primarily consisting of buildings but instead of small parcels of land with owners/tenants cultivating it and living on it then they are smallholdings.

Ofcourse there is need to distinguish, because it is very useful for orienting. As a example there are towns where both types exist.
Maybe it’s specific to Russia, but:

  • Lived and not lived plots are often mixed. This generally happens when family moved to city, but still visit their plot at weekends. Or the plot was sold.
  • In some circumstances one may officially register on a land which was originally an allotment and start to live on it.
    In fact allotments and smallholdings look alike, at least for ordinary traveller/mapper…

Anyway thanks for an explanation about allotments and residental. It is not so easy to grasp foreign terms. :slight_smile:

OK - glad I could help. :slight_smile:

I have created a proposal for country-side lived areas: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Homestead
Please look, correct and leave your opinion.