Hello Ionut Paduretu, SilverStorm03 is no longer on the team so I will be handling this on their behalf. They decided to tag these ways as highway=pedestrian because the place=square multipolygon for Scuarul Libertății ( relation/13816568 ) was already tagged as highway=pedestrian, so setting these to match was mainly for consistency. It also falls in line with the description of squares and plazas on the highway=pedestrian OSM wiki page ( highway=pedestrian#:~:text=relative%20to%20region.-,Squares%20and%20plazas,-%5Bedit%20%7C). I do see how these could be interpreted as footways as well, and I see that you have already changed them to highway=footway, so either way is fine. Thanks for reaching out and happy mapping!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. My goal is to follow OSM policy as closely as possible. Considering there is only one gated outlet to enter or exit this neighborhood, we can infer only residents are using these roads, which aligns with how the OSM wiki defines access=private (access=private). I agree that the OSMwiki could be more prescriptive for private gated neighborhood tagging. Would it be possible to raise the issue on the Philippines Community Forum to get a consensus and possibly make an update to the wiki page for both access=private and access=destination? Thanks again for your feedback.

Hello DP24PH, thank you for reaching out. The OSM Wiki page for access tagging (access=*) states, under the description for ‘destination’, “Note that ‘access only for residents’ is private.” This area looks like a private residential neighborhood so using the tag access=private seems appropriate to me. What are your thoughts on using access=private tagging for these areas based on that?