People often say that in OSM a building refers to the typology and not to the function. I am happy with this definition, but have some questions on the topic.
The building page on the wiki [1] lists e.g a church, cathedral and chapel. But what is the structural difference between a church and a cathedral ? I always thought a cathedral is where a bishop leads the messes (or something like that). The wiki page on cathedral tries to avoid this by saying some buildings are build as cathedral but without a bishop, without saying how one can see the difference between a cathedral and a church. I understand that chapels can be attached to other buildings, but they can also be free standing. But how different are the bigs ones then from a small church ? I see similar problems with rectangular buildings with one or two entrances a couple of floors, a flat roof and a lot of windows. They can be schools, commercial, apartments, civic buildings. I guess one has to take the interior division into account as well to determine the type, not ? So can a commercial building change to a school when the interior wall are changed? And if so, why is a church not changed into an apartment building when the interior changes ? Or are we just wishing that building refers to the structure and not the function ? Or am I overthinking the whole topic ? Those questions came up after I tried to answer a question on a barn used as church and community centre on the help website. regards m. [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:building _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
