OpenStreetMap
Vanishing built heritage
Posted by b-unicycling on 17 February 2022 in English. Last updated on 19 September 2022.The housing crisis in Ireland is really bad, to put it in simple words - I’m sure it’s similar in other countries too with potentially residential buildings being vacant, neglected, abandoned and consequently having to be demolished. If there are new houses being build on their spot, okay, at least that will reduce homelessness a bit, but some of these demolished buildings were listed as Architectural Heritage. I have tagged buildings in Kilkenny as vacant=yes and abandoned=yes (if the windows are boarded up, for example) and made a uMap of that. A Green councillor had become aware and asked me to cooperate. She is also involved in the “Keep Kilkenny Beautiful” initiative, and one of her group joined me in my survey.
Recently, I discovered that the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage had buildings listed that were long demolished (can I just say that our OSM way of curating maps is potentially so much more up to date) and reported it to them. This led me to add the tag ref:niah [EDIT: changed to ref:IE:niah] to all the vacant and abandoned buildings which were in that database. There are quite a few. Out of 80 buildings tagged “vacant”, 20 are of architectural significance and out of 28 tagged as “abandoned”, 9 have a ref:IE:niah tag. (And there is one which I think should be listed, but isn’t, but that’s for another day.)
(Unfortunately, their links need the number AND name of the building, it seems, so we cannot link directly from OSM to buildingsofireland.ie using that number.)
Discussion
Comment from DeBigC on 17 February 2022 at 11:55
I agree with your main point, that OpenStreetMap has a superior potential for update cycles, with many more eyes on the records of disused and abandoned buildings.
However, this entire area is fraught with difficulties. There are more campaigner motives than citizen science motives in the #Derelict projects, I even have evidence on my twitter feed that shows expressed skepticism about measuring the extent of the problem over the desire to get shouting at politicians on twitter. There is a populist slogan “we all know where they are”, which will make its way into the conversation pretty quick when someone suggests adding them to a map.
Other problems of definition exist, like for example the absolute lack of clarity about what people mean by derelict, V vacant V disused, and the further issue that it is impossible to know the full facts without some local knowledge.
OpenStreetMap is not set up philosophically to deal with populism, and mappers should tread carefully in the above environment.
Comment from Sam Wilson on 18 February 2022 at 01:33
I guess it’s not the best link, but Wikidata’s Irish National Inventory of Architectural Heritage ID (P4088) property uses URLs like https://maps.archaeology.ie/historicenvironment/?REG_NO=22207707
Also, I guess every place in that database should also be in Wikidata, so can have a
wikidata=*key as well.Comment from b-unicycling on 18 February 2022 at 08:56
Hi Sam,
thanks for your comment. I was trying to link to the database directly rather than the map. And you’re probably right about wikidata, I’ll put it on my todo-list.
Comment from Pieter Vander Vennet on 27 February 2022 at 16:19
Hi b-unicycling,
We have (and had) very similar problems in Bruges, where heritage-buildings were vacant, rotted away and were demolished when they were on the brink of collapsing to make room for new, modern projects. It’s been better now though - one of the complexes around the corner from where I lived have been incorporated into a modern project, striking a compromise between modern needs and the architectural value of the old monastery. I was somewhat happy with the project, as it meant that at least something would be preserved after being vacant for over 40 (!) years.
Ironically, it has been squatted by a group of activists who did a good job in doing the most urgent repairs (ie fixing leaking roofs, cleaning bird corpses and closing wide-open windows); in the mean time turning the building into a very artistic spot. It was nice to visit them too, they did open days and music gigs every now and then.
Apart from that, we sometimes link heritage to our heritage website operator too.