On Sat, Nov 24, 2018 at 12:45 AM Allan Mustard <[email protected]> wrote:
> Well, a central bank is a bank, after all, whether it is owned by the > government or is a "private" parastatal organization. I would tag it as > amenity=bank since it is a bank. Not all banks offer consumer services, so > the fact that an individual cannot open an account in a central bank > doesn't disqualify it. Individuals cannot open accounts in the Bank for > International Settlements, either, but it is a bank. A central bank is a > specialized bank that serves the government (controls the monetary system) > and the commercial banking sector. That's why it is called a "central" > bank. > > > It also wouldn't be tagged as a bank, because it doesn't have accounts > & you can't go in & deposit / withdraw cash, or take out a loan. > > Maybe you and I cannot, but the commercial banks in that country can. > It's a bank. > While central banks are certainly banks in and of themselves, I think tagging central banks as plain amenity=bank *without other qualifying tags* is a tricky one, and might constitute as expanding the definition of what amenity=bank is on the OSM wiki. The OSM wiki states that an amenity=bank feature is a "financial establishment where customers can, among other services, deposit and withdraw money, take loans, make investments and transfer funds". I would think that the word "customer" in OSM is intended to refer to people and regular businesses, and this is why such establishments are under the amenity=* key. Unlike regular banks, central banks usually only have other banks and their government as their sole customers and in many countries, central banks act as a regulatory agency for banks and other financial institutions, set country-wide fiscal policies like interest rates, and print/mint their countries' currencies. It therefore makes sense to tag central banks somewhat differently from other banks. I would also like to note that in my country, we do have a central bank, but we also have two 100%-government owned commercial banks, established by law, that I would not hesitate to tag as amenity=bank because they offer financial services to the public at large. As for the current proposal, in my country, we currently tag central bank land as landuse=commercial. It might make sense to switch this to landuse=governmental (or some other keyword as may be decided by OSM) if this proposal pushes through. ~Eugene
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