This is a summary of the problem and a proposal regarding inconsistent treatment of greenery in sidlisko areas in Bratislava, Slovakia. Some arguments stem from my own experience with mapping these, some echo those I saw in various changeset comments. The following text is likely not exhaustive and I invite anyone concerned with the matter or area in question to join in discussion.
The subject
Greenery areas around blocks of flats on Bratislava’s sidlisko areas are specific. They’re typically grass, but often also with trees, benches, bins and play structures within them, all of it somewhat regularly maintained. I’ll call these areas panelak greenery for the remainder of this text.
The motivation
I began micromapping Karlova Ves and simply found that when adding detail up to splitting landuse on roads, using leisure=park becomes problematic. While leaving it mapped as huge blobs of leisure=park is an option, it’s a very rough approximation which doesn’t describe these areas in detail, which then defies the point of micromapping.
The problem
The subject as described above implies usage identical to that of a park, and indeed, leads one to consider that leisure=park is technically the right tag for such areas. It is also apparent that these areas are not parks in the traditional sense of being compact areas dedicated to leisure and intended for the wide public. Since this is a bit of an instinctive classification, I’ll try to break it down into particularities. What differentiates these areas from parks follows: