Please render natural=shrubbery

[hungerburg]

Since hedges do not render as areas, cf. #3844, a limited but highly prolific number of people use natural=scrub to map, what are in my understanding mostly hedge-like features: barriers to keep pedestrians from taking shortcuts. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:natural=shrubbery for complete description and account of other use cases.

As of now, this custom is regionally limited, the Netherlande being a prime spot of exploding use: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:ScrubByNumbersNLvsAT.png shows a comparison with use in Austria. In Austria, like in most of the world, such "shrubberies" are not mapped at all, not the least maybe, because there exists (not until recently) no valid tagging for them.

As the trend to map micro features is expected to continue ever stronger, there will be demand for a tag to correctly map those "shrubberies". As the people doing such mappings are very sensitive to rendering, it is to be expected that they will not use the concise tag, but the one that renders.

Therefore my plea to render natural=shrubbery. Give the authors of the shrubbery proposals a chance of having created a successful tag. Apart from preventing the information loss by dilution of millions of currently concise mappings of actual scrub, I think also the cartographers work will be a little easier, if a tag, that starts rendering at z7 or so will not be used on perhaps even more millions of features, that range from closet sized to the size of a medium flat.

[imagico]

Very new tag, zero uses before February this year, no consensus on its use.

Current use (around 2000 times) is fairly consistently applied for urban greenery. But to a significant extent for polygon mapping of linear hedges for which linear barrier=hedge (+width=/height=) is the more established (and semantically more meaningful) method of mapping, see for example:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/914194296
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/562827568
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/926141288
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/916799341
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/917567385

I am not opposed to rendering this in principle but right now this tagging competes with barrier=hedge (on linear ways), natural=scrub and natural=heath and to some extent also leisure=garden. I think it needs to establish its meaning and use relative to these tags with some clarity and acceptance among mappers before we can consider supporting it here.

[jeisenbe]

This tag is currently only used in the Netherlands, England and a couple other spots. It needs to be much more widely used before it could be rendered here:

I believe we should close this issue for now, but it could be reopened in a year or two if the situation has changed and the tag has been widel adopted by mappers in many countries.

[RedAuburn]

I think this should be reopened, natural=shrubbery is now consistently used for an area of shrubs, and the meaning is clearly stated on https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:natural%3Dshrubbery

it is also being adopted very quickly, as can be seen from the chronology graph:

Adding Carto rendering would be beneficial as it would prevent tagging for the renderer in lots of cases, for example i've seen a lot of areas that should be tagged shrubbery tagged as grass, scrub, garden etc.

[kocio-pl]

OK, it's over 5k now. This should be quite easy to implement, is anyone ready to prepare PR?

[jdhoek]

@kocio-pl Done!

(location in OSM)

[imagico]

Note the assessments from me in #4473 (comment) and from @jeisenbe in #4473 (comment) still apply. The use of the tag has slightly increased but it still has no broader acceptance. It is used by individual mappers in localized concentrations but there are no places where it is the dominating tagging for anything specific.

Overall at the moment where it is used it is essentially used as an umbrella tag for urban and less frequently near urban rural greenery. Its use in particular overlaps with what is much more commonly tagged (roughly in that order of prevalence):

• leisure=garden
• natural=heath
• natural=scrub
• barrier=hedge - either instead of what is more commonly mapped with linear hedges (like https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1015021223) or in addition to linear hedge mapping (like https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1028424094)
• natural=shrub (like here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1020960779)
• natural=forest (including double tagging like here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/918418611)

and just as a generic urban greenery tagging (like https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1046678798)

In other words: Its use has semantically widened compared to my previous assessment from last September but is is not in any way better defined in its delineation towards those tags which are much more commonly used for urban greenery and in a much better defined way. Like i wrote above:

I think it needs to establish its meaning and use relative to these tags with some clarity and acceptance among mappers before we can consider supporting it here.

And to be clear (because this seems to sometimes cause misunderstanding): This refers to the de facto meaning and de facto acceptance among mappers.

[RedAuburn]

Overall at the moment where it is used it is essentially used as an umbrella tag for urban and less frequently near urban rural greenery.

That's what a shrubbery is, yes.

Its use in particular overlaps with what is much more commonly tagged (roughly in that order of prevalence):

• leisure=garden
• natural=heath
• natural=scrub
• barrier=hedge - either instead of what is more commonly mapped with linear hedges (like https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1015021223) or in addition to linear hedge mapping (like https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1028424094)
• natural=shrub (like here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1020960779)
• natural=forest (including double tagging like here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/918418611)

These are all used interchangeably because there is no tag for shrubbery. when you look at the areas they describe on aerial imagery, they are all the same sort of thing. (apart from natural=forest, that should be grass)

In other words: Its use has semantically widened compared to my previous assessment from last September but is is not in any way better defined in its delineation towards those tags which are much more commonly used for urban greenery and in a much better defined way.

I disagree entirely, the use is semantically widening because people want to use a tag that renders, so when natural=shrubbery doesn't, they use something similar. If natural=shrubbery was only used to mean the same thing as landuse=grass, for example, the tag wouldn't need to be proposed.

[jdhoek]

The use of the tag has slightly increased but it still has no broader acceptance. It is used by individual mappers in localized concentrations but there are no places where it is the dominating tagging for anything specific.

Well yeah, without rendering in what is effectively the face of OpenStreetMap, using this tag is pioneering. I am pleasantly surprised it is growing as fast as it is given the lack of rendering.

Most mappers just don't bother and use natural=scrub for planted and managed shrubs, and for hedges mapped as areas too (especially with the support for rendering barrier=hedge withdrawn in Carto). It sucks having to use tags that don't render when your local newspaper even uses OpenStreetMap with the Carto layer for its articles, and I can understand the pragmatic approach of these mapper. But is this what we want to stimulate mappers to do?

There are a bunch of mappers here who — while not necessarily agreeing with the method of just removing rendering — at least understand your viewpoint regarding hedges mapped as areas and the misapplication of area=yes, and who find that misusing natural=scrub for urban managed greenery is hardly ideal from a semantic perspective. natural=shrubbery is at least an effort to solve these issues.

[imagico]

For better understanding (we should really put this into some kind of FAQ document because it turns up so frequently): One of our core goals is to support mappers in consistent use of tags and prevent unfavorable fragmentation of tagging. So if we'd communicate to mappers: You can either map urban greenery in a semantically well defined and differentiated fashion using leisure=garden, natural=heath, natural=scrub, barrier=hedge, natural=shrub etc. like the vast majority of other mappers do or you can tag it undifferentiatedly as natural=shrubbery then we'd have failed fundamentally in doing our job.

As i have expressed above i am in principle not opposed to rendering natural=shrubbery if it develops into a tagging for specific forms of urban greenery (in particular for what barrier=hedge has been partly overloaded in use on polygons in the past leading to semantic ambiguities) and consensus develops among mappers about the semantic delineation of this towards other tags. If any trend would become visible in direction of a well defined meaning we could try to think of a rendering that supports specifically such use and discourages a broader generic use for any and all urban greenery. But so far there unfortunately is no indication that something like this is happening. Instead the most dominant use of the tag is generic decorative greenery, mostly not very tall, i.e. heath height, which otherwise is predominantly tagged leisure=garden or natural=heath.

[hungerburg]

Do I follow up correctly: natural=heath suggested tagging for groundcover berberis eg?

[imagico]

Do I follow up correctly: natural=heath suggested tagging for groundcover berberis eg?

Well - what i suggest is not really the point here - natural=heath is however quite frequently used in urban contexts - often for maintained features. Like for example:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/321018325
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/572438946
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1039907307
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/995551598
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/633616777
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/925076690

[imagico]

See also #4251 by the way - where we have considered and positively assessed rendering landuse=flowerbed as a well defined and consistently used tag for a specific type of urban greenery. If use of natural=shrubbery would develop in a similarly positive fashion both could be rendered - provided that a suitable design can be found that fits into our design schema and that is intuitively understandable.

[hungerburg]

I clicked all the links. I guess, that all the objections against rendering this tag here would just the same apply on the usage of the heath tag there, if it was not already in wide use for something different.

To say it more directly: The examples are all mapping for the renderer.

[imagico]

natural=heath as a tag has its own issues, in particular its quite frequent use for mapping herbaceous vegetation (see here for some more lengthy discussion). But it is overall still fairly consistently used for something rather specific - that is low growing woody vegetation. I can't say for sure without on-the-ground inspection if all the examples match this core use but it is quite possible that they do.

But lets not get side tracked - the fact that we certainly have tags that we render for historic reasons despite them being no more used in a well defined fashion (which as indicated does not apply for natural=heath) is not a good reason to start rendering further tags with similar problems.

[jdhoek]

How is natural=sbrubbery not well defined and consistently used? All tags have examples of not being used correctly, even landuse=flowerbed. If you use that as a criterium no new tag can ever be included in Carto.

[imagico]

The question if a certain tag is used correctly by some subjective opinion about the meaning of a tag is off-topic here. And as explained above we have clear consensus that landuse=flowerbed is used quite consistently with a fairly precise meaning.

natural=shrubbery OTOH is - as explained - used in a broad meaning for any and all kinds of urban and near urban greenery (anything that is alive and green in an urban or near urban environment) - but only in a very sporadic and patchy fashion by individual mappers while most other mappers use more specific tags (see above) to map the same things. Within this semantic domain of generic urban greenery so far no clear core focus of the tag on something more specific that we could realistically support by rendering it, like for example the polygon mapping of barrier=hedge like stuff (i.e. fairly compact and homogeneous scrub plantations) can currently be observed. As much as i regret this on some level (because i think it would be highly beneficial if mappers had well established and nuanced ways to map plants in urban environments - be that in the form of new primary tags like this or secondary tags to already existing features) this is - for the moment - a reality we cannot ignore.

Side note: I have observed the struggles of mappers to invent new tags within the OSM tagging scheme in recent years on many occasions and in particular what typically does not work these days any more although it might have worked in the early years of OSM. I have written down some advice based on these observations last year to help mappers inventing new tags to avoid the most likely errors.

[vincentvd1]

Overall at the moment where it is used it is essentially used as an umbrella tag for urban and less frequently near urban rural greenery. Its use in particular overlaps with what is much more commonly tagged (roughly in that order of prevalence):

• leisure=garden
• natural=heath
• natural=scrub
• barrier=hedge - either instead of what is more commonly mapped with linear hedges (like https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1015021223) or in addition to linear hedge mapping (like https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1028424094)
• natural=shrub (like here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1020960779)
• natural=forest (including double tagging like here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/918418611)

It is not really fair to address the double tagging here. While the rule is: no tagging for the renderer; a lot of mappers still do, that is just a fact. A few months back, I saw a changeset with the text "shrubbery -> scrub". So the user found shrubbery the correct tag but because it didn't render, he retagged it. I later explained the situation and the tagging rule above to him and he is correctly using shrubbery now. So I know for sure that when we get render support on Carto, the (even more correcter) use will increase. I have tagged a lot of natural=scrub myself because there was no other tag like natural=shrubbery

And wiki pages are not static. They change over time with new insights. Over time, we can clearify some examples and definitions but I don't see a significant misuse of the tag yet. And a lot of people already ackowledged the gap that shrubbery will fill and support this tag (the very steep graph supports this despite lack of rendering). Render support will allow the tag to grow further and to mature just like many other tags.

[hungerburg]

I fully support the reasoning of imagico. A tag gets the meaning from its usage. I do feel bad though, when this shines a light on the openstreetmap community, that they differentiate vegetation solely by how tall it grows. A heath, a scrub, a wood are much more that different height plants. They are home to different kind of animal species too. They do well in certain climates more than in others, and so on. A single tag combination "natural=vegetation+height=nn" does not do the same job as tagging heath, scrub or wood.

[tjur0]

I can see where imagico is coming from.

I agree that natural=shrubbery had a wider use than the more specific tags like natural=flowerbed or barrier=hedge. However, the majority of natural=shrubbery is not used as general urban greenery. It is used as a specific type of plant, with a specific sociological meaning.

I do think some of the usage of natural=shrubbery is incorrect, and I think that we should correct these mistakes. But these mistakes are in the minority. The majority of natural=shrubbery is correctly mapped.

It is unfair to discredit a complete tag based on a small percentage of the usage.

I completely disagree with the suggestion that the objects that currently are tagged with natural=shrubbery could be tagged with another existing tag. And suggesting this shows a lack of understanding towards the different vegetation in the streetscape.

According to the usage, most of the natural=shrubbery is used in urban environments. Specifically on the side of streets and roads. Therefore, these objects are actively maintained and artificial planted by humans, this fact alone rules out both natural=shrub and natural=heath as a substitute for these objects.

Another suggestion is to use leisure=garden, that suggestion is even less appropriate, a shrubbery is not a garden. Sure, a garden could contain shrubberies. In the same way a garden could contain trees, grass, and water. But a shrubbery is not meant to be visited or to be walked through.

Tagging shrubberies with any tag of the above would be a clear example of tagging for the renderer.

natural=shrubbery is specifically used as the maintained and artificial counterpart of natural=shrub. And is therefore not any wider than natural=shrub in any way.

The fact that natural=shrubbery is used in localized concentrations should not be a reason not to render natural=shrubbery. the localized concentrations are a result of the low number of mappers willing to use a tag that does not get rendered. And by the large number of shrubberies in the world.

I think this tag should be rendered, mainly because there is no alternative tag to map shrubberies.

[imagico]

Please no tagging discussion here - as said many times (and also on this issue already - see #4473 (comment)) if a certain use of a certain tag is correct or not and if a certain tag should be used for certain things is not relevant on this issue tracker. If anyone wants to put into question my analysis of the actual use of the tag in #4473 (comment) please do so - but please provide evidence and not just make unsubstantiated claims.

[tjur0]

with respect to you

Please no tagging discussion here

I did not start that discussion

provide evidence and not just make unsubstantiated claims.

That is a bit hypocritical, data is evidence, finding and linking a handful of ways is not

[hungerburg]

Actually, in the colloquial meaning, a shrubbery IS a type of garden. Just search youtube for "shrubbery monty pythons", and you can see. Too bad, that some time in the past, mappers did not use "barrier=hedgerow", because then "barrier=hedge" would be free now for polygons.

[jdhoek]

Here is another sample rendering from the PR in #4530. (It includes some patches of natural=scrub that should become natural=shrubbery, but I tend to leave existing entities as is if the replacement leads to a degraded map in OpenStreetMap's showcase rendering).

[imagico]

We render tags if and when (a) there is consensus among the maintainers that doing so is in support of our goals and (b) there is a PR suggesting a rendering for it that is suitable under these goals. Neither of these is the case here. Arguments for that assessment are provided in previous discussion (here and in #4530). As mentioned already in #4473 (comment) we will be watching the development of use of the tag and we welcome further analysis of tag use as input (like @hungerburg did in #4473 (comment)).

Slightly off-topic advice: If the Netherlands mapping community considers themselves avant-garde w.r.t. mapping of vegetation or mapping in general it might be a good idea to develop your own map style reflecting that. Many local communities have their own map style projects and diversity in available map styles is in general highly beneficial for OSM. Our aim is to serve the potential global map user and to support consensus among mappers globally - and that naturally limits our ability to adjust to local trends that are - subjectively or objectively - ahead of the rest of the world.

[OttoROSM]

Thanks for the advice; but as your goals state: Carto is "a major part of the public face of OpenStreetMap for many people the map on osm.org rendered with this style is OpenStreetMap."

The goal here is not to invent yet another style, but to show on osm.org what is there in real life and being mapped.

Again, wether shrubbery requires it's own specific rendering as compared to scrub or not I leave to debate. But I do believe your goals support at least it being rendered at least similar to scrub or a shrub. And for the case where larger areas of i.e. hedges the barier=hedge tag really is not 'esthetically pleasing'

Showing where these green patches are

• Legibility and Clarity makes the map more 'intuitively readable' and 'esthetically pleasing'
• Being understandable and supportive 'serve as feedback for mappers and ecourage correct mapping' - the latter you could debate to what these patches really are; but certainly they are not scrubs, nor village green and garden is also not really what they are. But I guess this is something you could call 'of opinion' and this discussion should be part of the OSM discussion, rather than on the renderer.
• Diversity 'should represent the diversity of the OSM community and geography in general' we are not aiming to implement a specific tag rendering for something that only exists in the Netherlands. This type of green can be found all over the globe in urban environments. (and the tag is used also in other parts of the world). With that in mind , you could argue that the rendering of Village Green is kind of against this goal; as it is a very specific English tag (derived from English law), that has very limited match to what it means elsewhere and is often (mis)used in other countries to siginfy festival grounds or the main square in a village; and does not even have to include actual green.
• A rich map 'deliberately creating a fairly rich map showing a significant number of different features' and 'gives a broad recognition to the mappers' work' as well as 'not to show all or even most of the OSM data.' Shrubbery is a differentiation of green in urban environments, to differentiate between higher quality gardens and simpler shurbbery. But it does signify quite a large amount of area's on the map.

The aspects of Maintainability and Adaptability/EoU I can't comment on. I can imagine that different rendering for Shrubbery density would be not support the goals; but to render it for now the same as scrub (in the same fashion grass and village green have the same rendering) or one specific rendering for shrubbery; I can't imagine would go against these goals.

[OttoROSM]

@imagico I saw your comment on heigth; personally I don't think this is necesarily something you would want to show in the layer. At least not on Carto. Differentiation in density could be usefull; especially to diferentiate between a 'box' style hedge that occupies a larger area vs a hedge used as a barrier and shrubbery used as urban greenery.

Again, the exact implementation of this tag in terms of visualisation; i am no expert in. I just find it odd that today it is not being rendered at all, where per your goals and gudielines; I do find merit in the differentiation between scrub (unmaintained wild undergrowth not being trees), shrubbery (properly maintained greenery not being gardens) and village greens (oddly English named centers of villages ;-), often having nothing to do with actual plants (asside from maybe a patch of grass))

[vincentvd1]

We render tags if and when (a) there is consensus among the maintainers that doing so is in support of our goals

Rendering shrubbery would comply with at least goal 2 (Being understandable and supportive for mappers) and 4 (A rich map). People now incorrectly use natural=scrub for areas that are clearly natural=shrubbery. They do this solely because scrub renders and shrubbery not. There are even Dutch mappers who said they use scrub because shrubbery does not render. And shrubbery is a common feature, especially in urban environments so rendering shrubbery would show the richness of the data in some cities.

At last, even the popular Organic maps app renders shrubbery. For pragmatic reasons, I asked them to simply render it the same as scrub. Carto could do the same. If the usage keeps growing, we can later decide to render if differently. Providing render support, increases usage and thus discussion about the tag. This allows for improvements in the definition.

[vincentvd1]

I did a small analysis of the current shrubbery use per country and continent

Some comments on this:

• There are a total of 24440 polygons with shrubbery. For the country table, I cut off countries with less then 10 shrubbery.
• In the Netherlands, we have detailed datasets and because of previous imports, we can focus a lot on micromapping like shrubbery.
• It is also known that western Europe is more detailed so it also makes sense that in that region, there is higher usage and will remain so.
• The usage in the USA is also not small given an unrendered tag. It accounts for 15% of all shrubbery.
• Again, for an unrendered tag, the overal usage is high and steadily growing.

Per country

Country	Count	Percentage
Netherlands	13016	53.257
United States of America	3622	14.82
Germany	1387	5.675
Belgium	1099	4.497
Poland	872	3.568
U.K. of Great Britain and Northern Ireland	735	3.007
France	690	2.823
Sweden	470	1.923
Russian Federation	329	1.346
China	323	1.322
	229	0.937
Indonesia	197	0.806
Denmark	172	0.704
Canada	123	0.503
Italy	121	0.495
Austria	118	0.483
Iran (Islamic Republic of)	92	0.376
Switzerland	90	0.368
Australia	88	0.36
Finland	67	0.274
Philippines	63	0.258
Hungary	59	0.241
Hong Kong	48	0.196
New Zealand	41	0.168
Spain	40	0.164
Mexico	33	0.135
Latvia	31	0.127
Luxembourg	30	0.123
Czech Republic	29	0.119
Ukraine	21	0.086
Slovakia	19	0.078
Norway	19	0.078
Democratic People's Republic of Korea	17	0.07
Republic of Korea	16	0.065
Djibouti	15	0.061
Japan	13	0.053
South Africa	10	0.041
Slovenia	10	0.041
Portugal	10	0.041
Israel	10	0.041

Per continent

continent	count	Percentage
Europe	19447	79.57
Africa	52	0.213
Oceania	130	0.532
Americas	3781	15.471
Asia	801	3.277
	229	0.937

[hungerburg]

use per country

With three (3) taggings I am above median - https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1yxG - in Austria.

UPDATE: Mind you, this gives the users that were the last to touch an entity with that tag. That may be different from the ones that set the tag. It is not possible - I think - to get the number of users that first added the tag. Although the query can be modified to only return entities that are still in initial state way["natural"="shrubbery"](area.searchArea)(if:version()==1); but that omits retaggings too.

[vincentvd1]

Ow, thanks for that overpass code. Didn't know that was possible. So, a further analysis then.

• In total 662 Used shrubbery 1 or more times.
• The average use per person is 36 with 191 people who used it more then 10 times.

Analysis on spatial usage:

• The image below clearly shows more usage in Europe and Northen America. This is ofcourse to be expected.
• If you zoom in on the areas in Europe and the USA, you can spot the cities and villages based on the cluster of points. This means that shrubbery is predominately used in urban areas. This is quite an accomplishment for an unrendered tag.
• I see that in Africa, shrubbery is used where it clearly should be scrub. I will try to correct the clearly wrong use there. The incorrect usage seems to be just by a single user. But small mistakes are expected and every tag has them. Overall, the usage seems correct.

In conclusion, I don't see why it cannot be rendered. Overall, the usage seems correct. A very pragmatic solution would be to render it the same as natural=scrub and change it later (or not) if the usage grows. Adding render support will increase the usage for sure.

[OttoROSM]

This tag is currently only used in the Netherlands, England and a couple other spots. It needs to be much more widely used before it could be rendered here:

I believe we should close this issue for now, but it could be reopened in a year or two if the situation has changed and the tag has been widel adopted by mappers in many countries.

Seems well time to reopen and implement.

[vincentvd1]

@imagico Is there an objection to render it the same as natural=scrub? Shrubbery has been used 33.000+ times now and even popular renderers like Organic maps, openmaptiles and Tracetrack Topo render it from which I conclude it is popular enough already. Rendering it the same as natural=scrub seems like a good solution for now. In the future, the rendering can be adjusted if needed.

[imagico]

Standing decision is not to render this. Any new arguments on that matter are welcome of course.

On the hypothetical question of how we could proceed on rendering this in the current de facto meaning if we should think it is advisable to do so i commented a bit in #4473 (comment). But as said there - this is purely hypothetical - tags do not tend to widen in use substantially without a change in meaning.

Current use numbers: Global: 34030, Netherlands: 19619 (that means increase in the dominance of the NL from 53% reported in #4473 (comment) to 58%) Also over-proportionally increasing seems to be the use in Flanders and Brussels (whole of Belgium 1646 uses - 4.8% from 4.5%).

As a frame of reference: During the same period of four months the use of other tags overlapping in de facto meaning with natural=shrubbery have increased by:

• natural=scrub: 150k
• barrier=hedge: 120k
• leisure=garden: 50k
• natural=heath: 17k
• natural=shrub: 12k

[pelderson]

how we could proceed on rendering this

A green colour like natural=wood or leisure=garden would do nicely for these mostly small areas of maintained shrubs. The tag is quite popular, despite not being rendered on OSM Carto.

[maro-21]

I support the idea!

The tag is already used 40,000 times and its usage is growing exponentially.
https://taghistory.raifer.tech/#***/natural/shrubbery

[hungerburg]

40k is not bad for a tag-as-you-like tag. The hockey stick though is mostly a trick of the zoom level you are looking at the data, try changing window size.

Curiously, within Europe, it is mostly used in Spain? https://dashboard.ohsome.org/#backend=ohsomeApi&groupBy=boundary&time=2021-03-01T00%3A00%3A00Z%2F2024-03-19T14%3A00Z%2FP1M&key=natural&value=shrubbery&types=way&measure=area&adminids=-2323309%2C-52411%2C-2202162%2C-51477%2C-51701%2C-365331%2C-16239%2C-51684%2C-62149%2C-49715%2C-62273%2C-1311341%2C-295480%2C-50046%2C-52822%2C-2978650%2C-54224%2C-79510%2C-72594%2C-72596%2C-59065%2C-60199%2C-14296%2C-21335%2C-58974%2C-90689%2C-214885%2C-218657%2C-1741311%2C-186382%2C-192307%2C-53293%2C-53292%2C-2528142%2C-53296%2C-2088990

UPDATE: There must be an error in ohsome dashboard: It counts 65 uses, total length 24m, perimeter 31km and area 21.6km² - Cannot work out.

UPDATE2: Seems ohsome is not good a calculating the area of not-closed-ways such as https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/598546589 where the shrubbery perhaps rather tagged hedge?

UPDATE3: ohsome workers 24/7, https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/32487192/history is the culprit.

[maro-21]

Not surprisingly, a tag is used more often in Western Europe - there are the most active users there.

[OttoROSM]

50k is not bad for a tag-as-you-like tag.

[OttoROSM]

Issue is still there. tag is not being rendered; while it is being used more and more.
The criterium from yourself was that you don't want to render tags that are not being used; it is being used.

[ZeLonewolf]

While the overall usage of this tag has continued to increase, it is still for the most part only used in significant numbers in The Netherlands and hasn't really caught on more broadly:

You can use this QLever query to analyze this. Press "execute" and then "map view" to generate the map.

[OttoROSM]

Makes perfect sense; as for OSM in The Netherlands:

1. There is a lot of high quality up-to-date imagery (i.e. every 6 months, the country is overlflown by plane and provide 8cm imagery as open data) and
2. The Netherlands is densly populated and as a result highly regulated in terms of landuse and also this data is provided as open data by the goverement and (i.e. topographic data for landuse, buildings, water, etc...)
3. There is an active mapping comunity and
4. The Dutch Governement (and Dutch people) like the public space to be organised and 'taken care off'. So there is a lot of managed public green as planted/maintained shrubbery that are not parks or gardens. And it is hard to find unmanaged things like scrub or forest. Most forest are managed as well.

Even though some countries have either one of the above; not many have the combination thereof. With the result that there is still a focus on getting buildings, roads and general landuse mapped; rather than detailed mapping where you'd make a distinction between landuse to this detail.

Thake this neighbourhood as an example; there is public grass and shrubbery next to the residential gardens.

and another reason:
5. People like to see what they map; so if it is not rendered they try another tag that is being rendered in stead.

[hungerburg]

I recently told a local mapper about shrubbery, because they mapped a 0.75m wide hedgerow as an area. Funnily, in OSM Carto this renders a 1.25m wide hedgerow. One week passed, no new shrubbery here. Even the 1.5 m wide hedge-areas still hedgerows with an eye inside. Wait a little longer?

[imagico]

Our limited ability to accommodate the Dutch avant-garde in mapping has already been explained in #4473 (comment).

Independent of that it would probably help anyone who wants to use natural=shrubbery in map rendering somewhere if the Dutch community would be able to provide pointers to some non-OSM Dutch maps that make a differentiation like the one made by the Dutch community through use of natural=shrubbery instead of more established tagging. Meaning: Maps that show woody greenery with some level of maintenance independent of function and height in a distinct but uniform styling while showing woody greenery with a lower level of maintenance differently.

Side note: It always seemed curious to me why the Dutch community explicitly wants to map woody urban greenery undifferentiated by height considering height is the primary differentiation in traditional mapping of woody vegetation with no dedicated function in OSM (the natural=heath/scrub/wood progression) and has such immense practical significance. But it makes sense considering the described mode of mapping: Even with very high resolution imagery it is hard to reliably determine the height of greenery when doing armchair mapping. Especially for planted and intensely maintained stuff where you cannot hope to infer the height from the ecological setting.

@hungerburg - At the equator hedges at z19 are 1.2m wide, at 60 degrees latitude only half of that. Ground unit rendering of line features at high zoom levels is something we have discussed in the past - but, unfortunately, only about 0.2 percent of all barrier=hedge features have a width tag at the moment.

[OttoROSM]

@imagico thank you for your response. Determining the height of any item in OSM is challenging and, in my opinion, still in its early stages. However, it is becoming more popular to accommodate 3D maps. As I mentioned in #4473 (comment); I don't believe height is the most crucial factor; perhaps density is more important, as it indicates whether you can walk through an area or not.

Regarding barrier=hedge, this tag is only for line items and doesn't accurately represent the irregular shapes of hedges. For this reason, the shrubbery area tag is a suitable alternative.

I wouldn't describe Dutch mapping as 'avant-garde'; rather, the Dutch government provides many excellent tools for detailed mapping that, to my knowledge, many other countries lack. Consequently, it is not surprising that these detailed differentiations are more commonly used. For example, aside from aerial imagery (including height profiles), most larger municipalities also publish street view images as open data. This is a great help in combining local surveys with armchair mapping.

I don't quite understand your curiosity about why one would want to differentiate between different types of vegetation. Carto also differentiates between various types of woodland/vegetation and land use, such as:

• At least seven different types of woody vegetation: natural, mangrove, broadleaved, needleleaved, mixed, leafless vegetation, and dwarf scrubs.
• Carto differentiates between farmland, vineyards, orchards and plant nurseries and even renders flowerbeds, which I always find to be a curious tag.
• Four types of sandy surfaces, including two types of beaches with distinctions between coarse sand (only 3.8k uses of this tag combination) and normal sand (39k uses of this combination).

Although I could at least think of one reason* of why you want to distinguish between these types of beaches, the tag usage for beach types is far less than for shrubbery. Yet, as Carto claims that usage is a key motivator for rendering, there would be no reason to render coarse beaches. (* do I want to lay done on it or not ;-))

As @jdhoek comments here: #4473 (comment)

Even just rendering it the same as natural=scrub would improve the user experience without any downsides.

One could also think of adding a symbol for shrubs to the rendering of scrub; similar as you do for dog parks and playgrounds to distinguish them from other recreation grounds and sport centers.

Why would it be strange to want to differentiate in tagging between shrubbery, garden, heath, and scrub, while Carto finds it perfectly normal to render with the same colour for differentiate tagging between grass, grassland, meadow, village green, golf course tee, fairway, and driving range?

As I mentioned, this is not a uniquely Dutch phenomenon. If you drive around other countries, you will see similar usage. However, before differentiating between vegetation, you first want to focus on other aspects. (e.g. roads and buildings)

My (our) request is to render the tag so it is visible as a green area on the map. If it can be distinguished from other vegetation, great; if not right now, perhaps in the future, that would be perfectly fine. But now we are left with a rendering that we grown to love (i.e. Carto) where parts of greenery in the urban area are absent from the map.

[maro-21]

While the overall usage of this tag has continued to increase, it is still for the most part only used in significant numbers in The Netherlands and hasn't really caught on more broadly

Because this tag DOES depend on latitude. Not so much a tag as shrubbery. They occur in urban areas and I wouldn't expect them in Africa, for example. And it is not used in other places because there is no preset. And if there is no preset, mappers don't know about it. Preset or no preset affects usage. Advanced and experienced mappers who can dig up such a tag from the Wiki are in the minority. Most are occasional mappers who have 50 edits and will occasionally add something. They would add natural=shrubbery, but they don't know about it.

[hungerburg]

The tool mentioned by @ZeLonewolf finds some interesting mappings in Russia, e.g. https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1227160205 - where do you think they got the tag from?

[maro-21]

where do you think they got the tag from

From JOSM preset.

[Koreller]

This tag is very useful and deserves to be rendered. I've mapped areas with this tag, and because it isn't rendered, the map is much less attractive and less understandable.

It would be very great to render it !

[gdabski]

Carto differentiates between farmland, vineyards, orchards and plant nurseries and even renders flowerbeds, which I always find to be a curious tag.

Ditto. Since flowerbed started to be rendered in Carto, I'm seeing people using that for what shrubbery should be, i.e. areas of non-grassy managed greenery with no flowers whatsoever.

And one could doubt if flowerbed even has or had a consistently understood or applied definition. At the time rendering was added, the Wiki article for flowerbed actually displayed a picture of something that is not a flowerbed per the Wiki's definition.