On Tue, Apr 23, 2019 at 10:33 PM OSM Volunteer stevea <stevea...@softworkers.com> wrote: > > I'll try to be brief, but there's a decade of history. The leisure=park wiki > recently improved to better state it means "an urban/municipal" park, while > boundary=national_park (or perhaps leisure=nature_reserve, maybe > boundary=protected_area) works on large, national (and state or provincial in > North America) parks. As the sharper wiki focus means a "city_park" (a > sometimes-found park:type value, I've written brand new wiki on park:type) > certainly qualifies as a leisure=park, this leaves county_parks (and their > ilk, like county_beaches) in a quirky "how best do we tag these now?" > quandary.
TL;DR - Tag the land use, not the land ownership. A city, town, county, or state park may be virtually indistinguishable urban green spots, recreation grounds, nature reserves, whatever. The level of government that manages them may be of interest and worth tagging, but ought not to be the primary determinant of 'park type'. I think that the Wiki definition leaves a lot to be desired, and I'm groping in a fog, much as you are, so please don't take anything that I say here as a confrontational pronouncement. My read on "urban/municipal" is that it describes setting and land use, rather than the operator. To me a "park" in a urban/suburban/front-country setting connotes a certain type of facilities. It will likely have adequate parking, or else access to public transportation. It will likely have public toilets. Some are designed as restful spaces within the urban environment. Such a park may have walking paths, benches, manicured gardens. Or it may have a part that's allowed to run a little bit wilder, but often in those cases it will have developed nature trails, perhaps with placards identifying species or discussing the local ecosystem. They may have elaborate landscaping, public art works, topiary, and other features to add visual interest. They will often have developed picnic facilities, perhaps even with gazebos or pavilions that can be reserved for parties. Some parks have further development. It's common to have playgrounds. Playing fields, swimming pools or beaches, grandstands for spectators to athetic competitions, and the associated facilities for athletes to bathe and change clothes are often found. It's not unusual for a park to have an outdoor theatre or music performance venue. Entertainments such as carousels or miniature trains are not unheard-of. If a park has a waterfront, then punts, rowboats, canoes, or pedal-boats may be among the attractions offered. Concessionaires hawk their wares. A park on a natural waterbody may well offer a boat launch and docks or quays. All of these features make for what is essentially a human landscape. It's one that's designed to be relaxed, focused on being a respite from the hurly-burly of the city, but it's still relatively densely developed - with many users concentrated in a relatively small area - and definitely human-sculpted. Whether the park is managed by a private conservancy, a city, a county, a state or province, or a nation doesn't affect this fundamental character. A 'national park' typically exists to protect and display some particularly valuable landscape feature. While more enlightened management tries to protect the rare species that inhabit such a space and the rare landforms found therein, what makes national parks so very popular are the striking viewscapes that can be obtained over large tracts of undeveloped land. Management will usually try to concentrate gawkers into a few 'sacrificial' areas, so there will be paved roads, parking, concessions, campgrounds and the like, and there will be relatively accessible 'front country' trails, often with staff conducting interpretive tours. Beyond that 'front country' development, recreations in national parks typically are strenuous outdoor pursuits: hiking, mountain biking, riding of horses or mules, canoeing, fishing and hunting where allowed, mountaineering, climbing, backcountry skiing. There's a far greater sense of solitude, and a much greater need for preparedness - if things go wrong, you're likely to be on your own for quite a while. Virtually all National Parks in the US (in contradistinction to National Recreation Area, National Monument, National Historic Site, National Scenic Trail, National Seashore, and the rest of the zoo of NPS-managed facilities) have just this sort of structure - a relatively small, developed 'front country' environment which most visitors never leave, facing a scenic, wild back country that is available to more intrepid travelers. Often the backcountry also partakes of the characteristics of 'nature reserve' in that it is managed for conservation and research. It's common for large 'parks' - both National Parks and the large state and county parks - sometimes to have mixed uses. Many National Parks, and many state and local facilities near me, have extensive inholdings - either land in private ownership, or land belonging to the managing government but leased to private holders. Harriman State Park, for instance, houses a fair number of quasi-private youth camps (often targeted at disadvantaged youth from New York City), campgrounds (for tent camping, caravans, and cabin users), and developed recreation facilities (with athletic fields, swimming beaches, changing facilities), all embedded in a fair-sized area of 'back country' that was an industrial wasteland a century ago but has had the intervening time for Nature to start reclaiming it. While you'll never be able to avoid the day-trippers, it's entirely possible to plan a long weekend of trekking in the park that won't leave the woods. It's actually a favourite area of mine to introduce beginners to trekking, because it's safe - there's a quick exit to a developed place from anywhere in the park. 'Nature reserve' covers a lot of things - which is why we augment nature reserves with boundary=protected_area tagging. It typically connotes few or no facilities for the support of human visitors. The Wiki description once assumed that nature reserves would be small green spaces close to the built environment, but has since been broadened to describe the way that the tag has actually been used, particularly in North America, where enormous reserves of undeveloped land are commonplace. A nature reserve may comprise only a few city blocks that are intentionally left undeveloped so as to have some relatively wild green space in the urban environment, or a protected wilderness of a thousand km². The protection class and title are really useful here. At one side 'nature reserve' also blends into 'forest'. At least near me, there are 'National Forests', 'State Forests', and 'County Forests' that share in common the legal fiction that they are managed to maintain a timber reserve. (The first US National Forests were created to ensure the US Navy a supply of ships' masts.) Some - not all - are producing forests. Most, in actual practice, are managed for wildlife, soil and water conservation, and for the less impactful outdoor recreation that I already characterized as typical of the backcountry areas of national parks. They share in common that they enjoy a lesser degree of protection, typically, than national parks or nature reserves - IUCN considers them resource-conservation areas. The name is NOT a reliable indicator here. In particular, in New York, Wild Forest is a classification just a shade below Wilderness. It's not producing forest - in fact, timber production is forbidden on Wild Forest lands by the state constitution. The difference between it and Wilderness is mostly that Wild Forest allows more mechanical recreation - MTB's, snowmobiles, perhaps even ATV's - because it is deemed capable of supporting slightly more intensive usage. State Forest is an entirely different kettle of fish. Many are producing forests, and many others are effectively game reserves. I think it's a fine idea to have park_level (although given that we're also talking about nature reserves and forests, that's an unfortunate name) so that we don't continually confuse the type of resource with the level of government that manages it. Perhaps in other countries, the goverment level is more predictive of the resource type, but my home state of New York has a treasure in its public lands, and next to no Federal management. (We have nothing titled National Park, and our other NPS facilities are mostly urban historic sites.) That's largely because we implemented the idea before the rest of the country, and Theodore Roosevelt took it with him to Washington. Then we can actually work on trying to sort out park types - with the idea that large 'parks', conserved at least in part as showplaces and tourist destinations, with extensive backcountry, could be 'national_park' irrespective of what level of government supports them, that 'parks' that exist in an extensively developed state for intensive use may be 'leisure=park', again irrespective of the level of government, and that 'parks' with few or no facilities for human visitors beyond blazed trails, primitive campsites, privies, and the like are really nature reserves. The 'type' of park ought to be "what type of experience ought the visitor to expect" and not "what government manages it." In my state: I have much the same sort of experience in the Bennett Hill preserve https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/345643852 - run by a private conservancy (with a tax abatement from the state), the Niskayuna public open space https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/7393853 - run by the township, the Plotter Kill Preserve - belonging to the county, and the undeveloped (and unsigned, except for boundary markers) Mohawk River State Park https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/7393854. They're all nature reserves. I expect a place to park, and perhaps a place to sign in and out. I had better bring a trowel if I'm planning to stay any length of time. There's a different feel also to be had in, say, the Roundtop Mountain Unit https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/424227080 - which is one of about four hundred recreational units *outside* New York City but owned by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (which buys land in that part of the state because its water supply comes from the rivers there and it wishes to protect the land from development). There's a much greater sense of wildness and solitude there, though, because it's contiguous with the Kaaterskill Wild Forest (as I mentioned, one level below Wilderness protection) Unless you're alert to the survey markers, it's not obvious when you cross from one parcel to the other. (I speak from personal experience. That was my jumping-off point for climbing Round Top and [Kaaterskill] High Peak.) But 'nature_reserve' covers a multitude of different things. It's a very different sort of experience from Blatnick Park https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/7393858 - township, Central Park https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/65768067 - city, Tawasentha Park https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/170525817 - county, or Lake Taghkanic State Park https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6447033 - all of which I'd happily tag with 'park'. There are ball fields, picnic areas, playgrounds, gardens, dog parks, concessions. The sui-generis Adirondack and Catskill Parks are a good fit to 'national_park', as would, say, be the agglomeration of Harriman State Park with the coterminous Bear Mountain and Sterling Forest, or the large Fahnestock https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6437616 or Allegany https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/325822775 parks. I might be convinced to put Watkins Glen https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6448362 in that category. It's got a large campground, a developed tourist area (the canyon east of the railroad, where all the spectacular waterfalls are) and then a backcountry section with a distinctly wild feel, mostly visited by trekkers on the Finger Lakes Trail. Backcountry camping is allowed, at least at designated sites. There's a bit of a similar feel to the state parks surrounding Niagara Falls - they're all about spectacular natural features - the falls, the gorge, the whirlpool - but I'm of two minds. The setting is unquestionably urban, and there's no real 'backcountry' experience behind the spectacular views. Bethpage State Park https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6447778 is a golf course. Robert Moses State Park https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6442393 is a swimming beach. I see no reason to map them as anything but what they are, except to inform the user that they're state-owned and run by OPRHP (the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation). _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
