Scattered around the town where I live are various concrete tubs. Typically around a metre wide, 60-70 cm high, but there are variations in size. Mostly circular, some square. Big and heavy enough that not even all the drunks exiting a pub would be able to carry them off. Mostly not an obstacle on the sidewalk, but some are. Mostly full of soil with decorative flowering plants. One has what is either a small tree or a large (but not bushy) shrub and a hexagonal bench built around it.
Nothing I’ve found on the wiki seems to cover it. Probably because I’m searching using the wrong terminology. Here in the UK the containers would be called planters. Wikipedia calls them container gardens. Small, less sturdy versions might be referred to as tubs with plants in.
man_made=flower_bed almost covers it, but the description implies flowers planted in the actual ground. leisure=garden is overkill, and still implies ground level. My guess would be amenity=something. They’re definitely not tourist attractions, so tourism=attraction is overkill.
Should they be mentioned, even at detail=insane? Some of them make traversing the sidewalk a little difficult for those in wheelchairs (not impossible, but they reduce the effective width of the sidewalk). They are sort of landmarks. They’re bigger than waste bins (and are occasionally used as such). So, if they should be mentioned, how to tag them?
As I said, in my country we call them planters too. And while OSM tends to prefer British English for tag names, it’s better if we can find a name that doesn’t confuse the Merkins too much.
The picture you posted shows an effete version of what I was describing. The walls look very thin, so the material is probably plastic or terra cotta. The ones near me are concrete a couple of inches (50mm or so) thick. If a drunk kicks one he breaks his foot, not the planter.
So, is it worth mapping them or not? It’s probably only really necessary where they introduce a narrowing in the sidewalk (most of the examples near me do not, but a couple do). But if it’s useful to map the obstructing ones, it’s necessary to invent a value for amenity=.
I could just go ahead and use amenity=planter, but maybe there’s something that would be better. Or maybe something that’s already been used that I haven’t found.
I agree with nevw that man_made is better than amenity. Believe it or not, I reached the same conclusion myself over my wake-up cup of coffee while I was waiting for my computer to boot.
And thanks to R0bst3r for the link to the talk page. Although it’s about barriers, and the ones I’m thinking of aren’t barriers (at worst they’re narrowings on a sidewalk but still leave enough room for one wheelchair to pass), it confirms the value “planter” is acceptable usage for these things.
So man_made=planter is it.
Oh, and thanks again to R0bst3r for the German maxim. And to google translate.
Hi Brian,
Did you consider them to see as a barrier=bollard, with bollard:type=planter ? Thats what they are, despite the distance in between, a kind of barrier to stop or block cars with a friendly look
None of the ones I’ve seen are acting as bollards. They could be used that way, but the ones I’ve seen are not.
Some are not on on any sort of way (vehicular, pedestrian, or cycle). They’re not where people ride of walk.
Some of them are on the sidewalk. They constrict the sidewalk, but not sufficiently so to prevent the passage of a wheelchair. So they’re not so much a barrier but traffic_calming=choker for pedestrians. Except they’re not intended as a calming measure.
While they may be used as barriers in some places, they most certainly are not bollards. I guess someone could fit a small flower pot into the top of a bollard if they really wanted to, but that’s far from what Brian de Ford is describing.
