DIY map

The problem: friends live in an area which is not covered by any map – it’s not in the local street map, Google map or any navigation system. Every time they give away the address, they have to explain where it exactly is and how to get there.

The area is old, but it was formerly used for garden plots only. As it happens often in Vienna, people started building small houses in their garden plots, then small houses start growing and transform the area into a (legal) residential area for permanent living with all necessary infrastructure provided.

Maybe their street doesn’t appear on a map because it’s a small and not a new area. Landuse slowly has changed over the past years, streets and pathways have been there for a long time but weren’t always publicly accessible. Maybe that’s the reason this area is still not in the radar of the big 2 street mapping companies: the area isn’t flagged as “recently developed, please map”.

The solution:

I showed them how to map their street in OpenStreetMap, with the result that they finally can point visitors to a nice map when asked where it is and how to get there. Mapping in OpenStreetMap through the browser interface is very easy and they will probably map their neighborhood too since it’s a totally blind spot on maps.

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