Proposal talk:Amenity=student accommodation

Discussion up to 14.07.2014

• Thanks for the proposal. In British English, "dormitory" definitely doesn't apply to an entire area containing multiple buildings, a playground etc - so it's a real stretch in my (Brit Engl) opinion. Why would you not simply use a landuse=residential area covering that area? That's what I do for housing estates and other named residential areas. Compared against a housing estate, a student residence has many of the same features: a name, an operator, etc. Could it be, perhaps, that you might be happy to use landuse=residential? --Danstowell (talk) 09:36, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
  • I'd agree totally with Danstowell here. We would usually refer to these as Halls of Residence for university-owned student accommodation. I think sub- or adjectival tagging is the way to go here: e.g., landuse=residential with residential=hall_of_residence (or just residential=student_accommodaton). I have used a similar scheme for 'student villages' a newish form of dedicated for-profit student accommodation in the UK, partly because its interesting to find such places. SK53 (talk) 09:44, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Thank you for the fast feedback. My English is not that good, I just took the value from building=dormitory, but that should not be the problem. To give an answer to your final question: I'm not happy. If you tag a landuse=residential with name=*, it says that this is the area of a named residential area (in German: Wohngebiet), that consists of several roads and a certain number of houses. Student villages can't be described like that in many cases. The example given in the proposal is an exception, but as it says in the text, it's the biggest one in Germany. The majority of student villages is much smaller and includes only few buildings, in my opinion that is far too small to be considered as an own residential area. Another point is: If this tag is unnecessary, why is there a tag amenity=retirement_home in use? I don't think that the difference between these two is not that big that one is tagged and the other one is not. --Hno 11:21, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
    • I agree, a landuse is not suitable here. For mapping these facilities, an amenity tag is definitely the right choice. --Tordanik 11:31, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
    • I have no opinion on retirement_home - let's judge this proposal on its own merits. Could you explain why a small student village is "too small to be considered as an own residential area"? I often tag small areas (e.g. an area of 4 buildings) as residential areas, and I don't know of any argument that says "residential area" has a minimum size. Maybe cross-cultural differences here? --Danstowell (talk) 17:32, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
    • I see no problem with "too small", I frequently mark residential areas for single home Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 18:08, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
      • Nevertheless, a landuse definitely does not express that this is a single facility operated as a whole by some entity. And I really wonder why everyone wants to move this into landuse when the real issue is the value, not the key. If "dormitory" would not be idiomatic usage, why not amenity=student_accomodation? --Tordanik 10:43, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
      • I think this depends entirely. Note my use of student_village is not meant for generic description of this type of facility, but for a recent development in the UK (see for example Raleigh Park in Nottingham). Use of an amenity=* is not precluded, because there is as yet no good mechanism for identifying campus-based accommodation (quite frequent on British Universities from 1950s-1970s). There are a number of private developments in the centre of Nottingham now explictly for students (Talbot & Mansion studios at this location, and several historic buildings in the city of Caceres are student hostels, such as the Colegio Mayor "Franciso de Sande"[1]. In Cambridge student accommodation which is not within a college building has still been mapped as building=university. I'm still in favour of sensible use of the landuse=residential.
      • So why don't we use landuse=residential on single houses and name it each time? As long as landuse=residential is not named, you may split it into square metres. But to define a named (!) residential area, it should be obvious to see where the area begins or where it ends, why it is named differently than the neighboring residential areas. That is in the first place defined by the building's architecture or their borders (streets, rivers, natural borders etc.). Just because there are in two of a hundred similar-looking houses only students living, the two houses are not an own residential area, rather part of one. --Hno 11:24, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
      • To make it short: It's equivalent to place=neighbourhood. Student homes do not fulfill the criteria for that.--Hno 10:21, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Discussion after re-proposal Feb 2020

Religion key combination

• I am unhappy with the "religion" key in this context. I would prefer something more generic like expressing restrictions for residents. You may have or not have restrictions based on age, gender, religion, school, student status, and most likely others. --voschix (talk) 10:40, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I did not add the religion key here, but I believe it is a good fit. I am using the religion key also in combination with universities, offices, schools and more. In my eyes, it typically means "operated by an institution of this religion". This is not necessarily about "restrictions". --Dieterdreist (talk) 10:45, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

That sort of use "operated by" should be represented by the operator= tag, and not by a religion= tag. As a mapper, and as a consumer of the data, I would assume that using a religion= tag involves a preference or even restriction to members of that religion. --Dani CS (talk) 12:51, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Other building types

• According to building=dormitory that tag applies to "Sleeping and living quarters provided by an institution for people associated with that institution.", however not all student accommodation meets that criteria many are commercially run like serviced apartments outside a campus or just in a city centre, and would be tagged building=apartments. So I think the proposal should mention these other possible building types that commonly apply to student accommodation. Aharvey (talk) 11:53, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

This proposal is not about building types. Please raise issues with the documentation about the building type at its dedicated tag definition page. Of course students may live in other situations as well, but if these are unorganized, private landlords then this proposal does not cover them (exceptions might occur in case accommodation is provided in significant numbers, do you have any examples at hand?). --Dieterdreist (talk) 13:01, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

You're right it's not about building types but the way it's written at the moment "The buildings can be tagged with building=dormitory anyway." seems to say the only valid building type for this feature is building=dormitory, I'd like to include other common building types used with student accommodation like building=apartments is that okay if I modify the page to say this? Here is one example https://iglu.com.au/. --Aharvey (talk) 23:18, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm with User:Aharvey here. Any description needs to recognise that student accommodation has changed enormously in the past 20-30 years (and is likely to continue to do so, as France & the UK both anticipate 100,000s of additional students). Student apartments (as opposed to dormitories) have been part of the accommodation landscape in the UK for 40+ years. The following types of accommodation are reasonably common in the UK: collegiate living (Oxbridge, but also Lancaster) where teaching, academic flats and student rooms and other facilities are mixed together; halls of residence (grouping of dormitory accommodation with other facilities - bars, libraries, dining etc); stand-alone dormitories (limited in UK); student villages (large purpose built gated communities of several hundred to a few thousand beds) with a mix of flats, studios, bedsits etc., run by for-profit entities; student flats (often more central than older accommodation), again run by for-profits; private rented student housing (often so-called HMOs houses in multiple occupation). All except the latter type will be designated for students only. The different types have quite different aspects: a hall of residence is quite clearly a university type building, whereas student villages and flats are quite clearly residential and an education/healthcare style landuse rendering would e inappropriate. This latter point is one major reason why a single separate tag would avoid this type of problem. In the US one also has fraternity & sorority houses. Anyway dormitories are just a part of a large significant variety of buildings and accommodation types in use. SK53 (talk) 14:51, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

serviced apartments

• Would it be better to have a tag for serviced apartments and then for student accommodation you'd use `amenity=serviced_apartment + for=students`? Similar to how amenity=social_facility works now as a high level which you can then specify with social_facility:for=* and social_facility=*. This would make it easier for data consumers if they are grouped more. Aharvey (talk) 11:53, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I have also thought about tagging them as social facility. Ultimately I decided against because their character is quite different, and because not all organized student accommodation will fit into the "social" box. --Dieterdreist (talk) 13:05, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I didn't mean use the social facility tag, rather a suggestion to tag these as long term stay apartments (as opposed to short term stay apartments tourism=apartment) then use for=student to indicate it as student accommodation. --Aharvey (talk) 23:22, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Serviced appartments seem quite different to me than typical student accomodations. The latter do not usually come with cleaning service and such, and are intended to be inhabited for a much longer time. --Tordanik 13:11, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

see also

• Maybe a see also link to tourism=hotel which is very similar but more designed for short term stay and not directly targeted at students. Aharvey (talk) 11:53, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Clarify to primarily(?)

"feature that provides student accommodation" - maybe "feature that provides accommodation primarily for students" would be better? It would exclude individual landlords renting apartments. It would also keep cases where university is also selling small part of rooms on free market (but with majority reserved for students, maybe except summer holidays) Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 13:48, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Right, maybe the definition has to be more specific. What about "Features that provide organized student accommodation"? I agree that individual landlords renting apartments or rooms should be excluded unless they have more than x places (generally, I am open to add privately run accommodation structures which specifically target students, as long as the scale justifies mapping them as a "feature"). I cannot understand how your sentence would exclude individual landlords renting apartments. --Dieterdreist (talk) 14:47, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Relation with landuse=residential

It is OK and preferable to have this feature either within landuse=residential or even amenity=student_accommodation and landuse=residential tagged on one object, right? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 13:50, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Why would it be preferable on the same object? If you would tag the whole landuse=residential with this tag, then both tags could be on the same osm object (because landuse=* is just a property, not a feature anyway), but if it were mapped on distinct objects it would be ok as well. --Dieterdreist (talk) 14:42, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

"then both tags could be on the same osm object" - and that would be 100% fine for many cases. "landuse=* is just a property, not a feature anyway" - what you mean by that? landuse=* is mappable as standalone feature, it is typical to use named landuse for well-defined named residential areas Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 11:01, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Dormitories for non-students

I appreciate that this tag is self-descriptive, but it focuses on students exclusively, whereas a dormitory can be for other populations. For example, an educational institution can also reserve a residential facility for teachers' accommodations, also called a dormitory. A monastery may have a similar facility for clergy on long-term visits. In some countries, it's common for factories to provide dormitories for their workers. The common thread among all these facilities is that they provide sleeping quarters (the original meaning of "dormitory", dating back to Middle English). I think amenity=dormitory would accomplish the intent of this proposal while still remaining intuitive due to its association with building=dormitory, just as amenity=school is closely associated with building=school. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 18:10, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Private student accommodation

How could this tagging scheme be adopted to refer to non university institutions? I am aware that operator=* specifies who runs the place, but it would be useful if there could be a different tag that categorises these operators more broadly.

I can think of the following broad categories: 1) The university itself. Public or private, they are provided by and for the students of one institution. 2) Non-university, government housing. For example, the government may provide mixed student accommodation for multiple universities in the same city. 3) Non-university, non-government, charitable. For example, in my country sometimes the church provides student accommodation to their adherents. 4) None of the above, private market. As a business, I own a building targeted specifically at students in an organised fashion.

Is anyone aware of any tags that could fit this purpose? Probably something like provider could work. PeachyOne (talk) 16:49, 25 October 2024 (UTC)