The OpenStreetMap project, as of today, has over 250,000 registered users. It is fair to say that most of these will never edit the map, or have just edited it to put their house in and then don’t return, but there are also a large number of active contributors to the project, such as the London community. Over 40,000 “ways” (generally, roads) are being added to the project every day. The project is continuing to grow, and the release of usable Ordnance Survey (OS) data covering the country, at the beginning of the month, looks like it will advance the project, rather than reduce its relevancy in the U.K. For the first time, a quick way to “complete” the roads is available, but there are many other features still to add which will keep contributors busy for years to come. For one thing, none of the OS data includes paths and tracks, and it’s not completely up to date, unlike OSM which sometimes gets roads added on the day they open – or before!
The London community at the moment is concentrating on filling in the building areas in central London, so the map here looks less like a “patchwork quilt” of filled and unfilled blocks, and more like the contiguous mass you see in other cities like Stockholm, Frankfurt or Milan. (Having said that, we are well ahead of Paris, Barcelona, and, suprisingly, Berlin.)
Our next pub/map meetup is in Holborn on Wednesday evening – come along!