OpenStreetMap
St Albans is a suburb of Melbourne, located 30 mins west of Melbourne CBD. Today it is one of the most vibrant commercial centres of the Asian Australian communities which are situated along Alfrieda Street and east of St Albans station.
It took me 1 hour and 5 minutes to add these POIs along Alfrieda St and Main Road East. I have had a chance to “re-visit” my old POIs uploaded 3 earlier in my first OSM survey trip in 2015. Yet there are many areas not covered by this trip, eg the Macedonian & Serbian shops in Main Road West, the shops in East Esplanade and Elaine Street.
Discussion
Comment from bryceco on 13 October 2018 at 16:03
I always find the mapping of these densely packed urban areas to be both challenging and rewarding.
Comment from TuanIfan on 14 October 2018 at 12:55
That’s true @Bryco. It took me a few years to choose the correct tags for some particular Asian businesses (grocery stores, baguette shops, bubble tea shops…), so now I believe i am 85% qualified to map those suburbs. Another challenge I usually face is that some services seem to be hidden behind small alleys and laneways, or old arcades, and if somehow I forget to walk further, I would miss out on them. What is rewarding?
Comment from kocio on 22 October 2018 at 05:18
Hi,
I think that most “supermarkets” there are convenience shops, like this one:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/5980632259
BTW: how do you tag bubble tea shops?
Comment from TuanIfan on 22 October 2018 at 05:28
Hi @Kocio,
I agree, most Asian grocery stores are smaller compared to regular supermarkets like Coles and Woolworths. However there is not any criteria on this, so I used Foodworks and KFL (an Asian supermarket chain) as a measure. Any store which is smaller than foodworks is tagged as convenience store, larger ones are supermarkets. So i guess the current “grocery stores” that I tagged before will be revised soon. Currently i tagged bubble tea shops as shop=beverages. I know it is not right but so far it is the most appropriate one for these shops. What do u reckon?
Comment from kocio on 22 October 2018 at 12:42
My thumb rule is size - if there are wheeled baskets, then it’s supermarket, otherwise (hand basket, no basket) it’s convenience.
For me it’s rather amenity than shop, so I tried amenity=coffee, but I’‘m not sure.
Comment from TuanIfan on 22 October 2018 at 13:15
I see. Thanks for your advice :).
Comment from TuanIfan on 22 October 2018 at 13:32
There are some more that I’m confused. They are: - baguette shops selling bánh mì : are the Bakery or Fast food? Most of these are also bakeries (baguettes are baked in the kitchen, and in the front house banh mi & some meat delicatessen are sold). I have tagged some of them as “fast food”, while some are bakeries. - Dessert places. Are they cafe or not? Tagging “cafes” cannot tell the main product of these shops.
Comment from kocio on 23 October 2018 at 20:42
This is a problem of a project that was born in UK… For example in Poland we have something like “milky bar”, but there is no popular tag for that.
I think you could talk about this on Tagging list to create some standard for Eastern amenities, it would be great to have some kind of standard not limited by UK/Western types:
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging