Key:abandoned
Summary
An abandoned feature is any man-made feature which has been abandoned by its owner and is no longer maintained. Immediate reuse is not planned, and it may have fallen into disrepair. Abandoned features may still be useful for limited navigation and are always visible in the landscape. For example, partly ruined derelict buildings, or other features which are no longer used for their original purpose and no longer maintained. Abandoned features frequently succumb to time and the elements.
"Abandoned" means infrastructure which cannot be put back into its original use without expensive repair or structural alteration. If it could easily be used again without much repair work, consider using disused=yes instead.
How to tag
- When a feature is abandoned by its owner and no longer maintained, begin by adding the tag abandoned=yes to it.
Adding this tag implies lots of things about the general state of repair of the object, but by itself isn't sufficient to describe the object's status consistently. To make the tags internally consistent:
- You must also make any tags which no longer have current meaning as a result of the abandonment unavailable to software which doesn't know about the abandoned=yes tag. This can be done by prefixing their keys with the namespace abandoned: — see the examples below.
Examples
In practice, computer programs which use OSM data such as renderers or routing engines cannot be expected to distinguish between, say, a parking structure tagged just as amenity=parking, and one marked both amenity=parking and abandoned=yes without special rules. Therefore it's necessary to tweak the tagging so that such programs do not see confusing data.
Following the more workable pattern thrashed out recently for disused=*, it makes most sense to move the no-longer-relevant properties of an abandoned object into an abandoned:* namespace prefix. This also solves the problem of potentially confusing data.
- See disused=* for more details of how to move tags into a separate namespace, as well as general guidance about which tags should, and should not be "namespaced out" in this manner.
Applies to
Used correctly, this tag may be applied to any object. There are some specific older uses and edge cases:
Buildings
- Abandoned buildings have no legal occupant and often fall into disrepair. If a building is empty but new tenants are being sought (such as a shop‐front with a To Let sign outside) please use disused=yes instead.
- Retain building=yes for recently abandoned buildings: it's still meaningful for them to be rendered by software which knows about buildings, but nothing about abandoned=yes. See the description of disused=* for more details.
- For historic abandoned buildings, consider historic=ruins or ruins=yes.
Railway
- Abandoned railway tracks may be tagged with railway=abandoned instead.
- If infrastructure is still in place, use railway=disused.
Highways
Abandonment of highways can be indicated with this tag, and former statuses can be moved into the abandoned: namespace if you like. Note that to be of use for routing, or to be displayed on maps, there should be some current value for highway=* present on the object: see the example above of a road whose status has changed markedly as a result of subsidence and abandonment.