This is the fourth in a series of posts which I’m doing this year inspired by another user’s monthly updates. In the two months since my last update, I visited Palos Verdes (a bit south of Los Angeles) and mapped a few other places remotely.

Also there is a geo-focused Mastodon server; you can find me there: @[email protected]

Palos Verdes / Los Angeles

There are a few fancy neighborhoods segmented by dirt paths which are either for utility access, bridle paths, or fire control. For example one road had horse stables on it, and another served as the boundary between two cities. There are a few access points which are barricaded with a reflector or guard rail, but you can still walk onto the path and onward into the next neighborhood. I talked to a resident who said that his car GPS considers these thru-ways, so it’s possible that they were more connected in the past? I would say OSM coverage of these was good but not great (particularly: linking entrances and exits to the road way, or missing shorter paths and alleys).

A local park was named “Los Arboles Rocketship Park” on Google. I visited and confirmed there is an actual sign with Rocketship in the name (based on a sculpture there).

Central Asia research

I’m considering a hiking trip to Tash Rabat, a Silk Road era landmark in Kyrgyzstan. OSM has the dirt road from the highway, and an additional trail north to Баетов which is missing from Google.

I was also looking at locations with Islamic architecture. Turkistan, Kazakhstan has parcel data (labeled building=yes) and then addresses added by Toyota. So that data is on a bit of a journey. A large area in the city center recently got redeveloped into a park, which I updated on the map. Google reviews dispute how often the park is fully open to the public, whether boats are working, etc.

Grand Canyon

After an announcement that the parks service was renaming Indian Garden to Havasupai Gardens, I renamed the area but kept the alt_name tag.

OSMBuildings

My changes to building height (a tower section separate from the base) weren’t showing up on the 3D view provided by OSM Buildings, so I investigated. I think the problem was an existing building relation where the building:levels tag was on the relation level. I had to add and remove a few tags so the building outline and address is consistent but the building:levels is different for the two parts. It looks great now!