So this weekend (20/06 - 21/06) I went full mapper-mode around Chitlapakkam and Tambaram. Grabbed my phone, walked around the neighbourhood, spent hours on my laptop for mapping and ended up with 18 changesets and ~96 edits over two days. Honestly, some of this should’ve been there years ago.

🏛️ Civic & Government Infrastructure

Starting with the obvious ones. The T13 Police Station and the Tambaram MLA Office, two places people actually need to find were nowhere on OSM. Not a node, not a building outline, nothing. Fixed that.

Also noticed the Sembakkam Zone 3 MCC was still tagged as whatever it used to be. It’s a municipal transit yard now. Updated accordingly.

⛽ Fuel & EV Infrastructure

The Shell petrol complex nearby was not mapped and a bit of a mess. I added the following:

• The petrol bunk as a proper node
• The EV charging station within the complex
• The convenience store attached to the forecourt

Also quietly deleted a defunct petrol bunk that closed down a while back. It was still sitting on the map doing nothing. Gone now.

The EV charger is probably the most useful addition here OsmAnd, Organic Maps and other navigation apps pull charging locations from OSM.

🛕 Religious & Community Spaces

Two temples in Chitlapakkam that have been around forever, but not on OSM. At all. They are now. Also added some metadata to a spiritual centre that was on the map but barely tagged (This was one of my first edits in OSM, when I started it 3 months back !!)

Oh, and the outdoor kids’ play area inside Chitlapakkam Park? Mapped. Families use it every single day and it wasn’t showing up anywhere.

🏥 Health & Financial Services

Walked around the Chitlapakkam surroundings and found a bunch of medical shops, a pharmacy counter, and a few bank branches that were missing. These are the places people search for when they actually need them. Added them all from the ground survey.

🍽️ Food & Local Businesses

Used MapComplete for two food-mapping sessions while walking around. It’s a great little tool, you open it, it shows you what’s unmapped nearby, you fill in the details on the spot. The guided form means you don’t forget any tags.

Walked. Mapped. Ate. (Okay maybe not in that order.)

🛣️ Road & Address Data Quality

Not everything is a shiny new POI. Some of the most useful edits were the boring ones:

• Road surface types on local streets
• House numbers from the boards outside homes
• Building outlines traced from the survey

Every house number that gets added means one more address that a delivery app or navigation tool can actually find. Small edit, real-world impact.

Summary

Category	Changesets	Approx. Changes
Civic & Government	5	~20
Fuel & EV	4	~23
Religious & Community	3	~25
Health & Finance	2	~28
Food & Businesses	2	~11
Road & Address	4	~5
Corrections	3	~2
Total	18	~96

All of this is in the Chitlapakkam / Tambaram / Sembakkam belt, Chennai. If you’re in this area, your map got noticeably better this weekend.

Happy mapping 🗺️