I ended up having some API-fun today.

Just took myself on a little North American OSM adventure as a spinoff to alexz recent diary entry about lodging roads in Canada (http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/alexz/diary/12842).

Nice to see so much data in the US, but it struck me how you can actually see off the OSM data how well developed/organized/privileged a country is. It is really apparent when following the Mexican/US border that Mexico is only sporadically mapped, in contrast to the areas just over the border which has a lot more coverage.

An interesting spot is around the bi-national area El Paso/Ciudad Juárez at http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=31.78&lon=-106.14&zoom=8&layers=O (more info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paso%E2%80%93Ju%C3%A1rez). Here some cross-border mapping has been done, but it doesn't stretch far into Mexico.

Being European having done no US-traveling at all, I don't know much about the Mexican/US tensions or conflicts. But from the map and geography I would reckon this whole area could be a rather interesting cultural exchange point.
Even though the mainstream press has it's focus on the very unsafe situation in Ciudad Juárez aka. City of the Dead (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Ciudad+Juarez), more local voices seems much more relaxed about this for the ordinary traveller(http://www.juarez-mexico.com/HTML/YourSafety/YourSafety.htm).

Think this area deserves a place on my 'want-to-visit' list.

Thank you to all OSM contributors for making this virtual adventure possible!

Mikkel
Denmark, Europe

First upload and editing for 1.5 month or so. Nice to see some improvements here, both in web, API and JOSM.
Great!

And I even got some fellow mappers in my home town which I've been mapping alone for the past year, very nice.

Mikkel