5 ms·

Any reason why North America has such little activity compared to Europe?

• maxerickson 6y ago
  Mostly just less contributors. Also time of day. Why there are less contributors is a harder question.
  • ac29 6y ago
    I assume because Google Maps and Apple Maps are good enough in the US, and Americans have less of an objection to using products from big American tech companies.
  • ce4 6y ago
    Maybe the early massive Tiger db drop into osm prevented the formation of a bigger community? I remember this being discussed years ago. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER
• pella 6y ago
  check the osmstats : https://osmstats.neis-one.org/ https://osmstats.neis-one.org/ (by country): https://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=countries https://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=countries
• tux1968 6y ago
  Noticed that too. I just signed up and added a few points of interest here in North America. Was surprised that I could create an account and see my updates appear on the realtime map moments later.
  • Aachen 6y ago
    Welcome to the club! :D
• Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  One reason of probably many: a lot of Europe has been mapped by cyclists. Much of Europe has distances that are relatively small enough that people can often go on some pretty productive mapping expeditions from a city. In the US there is less leisure cycling culture (people who do get out on bikes are often aiming for speed and exercise, not quietly spending a whole day out doing something), and the distances are much vaster so one cannot get to some places from the city and return in the same day. If you notice, even in Europe the completeness and up-to-dateness of OSM data starts to break down in areas (e.g. Lapland) where distances and remoteness approach that of North America.
  • Aachen 6y ago
    Nah, cycling is virtually nonexistent outside of the Netherlands and Denmark. E.g. Finland sees it as a hobby more than a transportation method, Germany doesn't see it at all. A train station just across the border in a town where most people work in the next city over (namely where that train goes) has three loops as their main bike parking and on a regular working day there is an average 0.5 bikes making use of it. From what I see and hear about being your kids' taxi until they get a driver's license (at 16yo already), I'd assume the difference is pedestrians. I'm nearly 30 and never owned a car, coming from a village and living in a town. Shops are walking distance, I take the bus to work (non-covid times) for environmental reasons, and I think a small majority of people I know do the same (most of my friends/acquaintances are in NL). Germany is already quite car-centric by my standards, yet they have the most contributors. There's still a lot of pedestrian traffic for the short distances inside of towns and cities, just no medium-distance cycling traffic. So why do they have the most contributors? Living in Germany, the mentality is different. I have been trying unsuccessfully for three years to find a good definition or concise explanation. There's something that drives use of Threema (paid), PGP and Linux (relatively hard to use), and OpenStreetMap (when sugar daddy Google gives you free maps already). Certainly Google's map here is worse than in their home market, but it's not bad either. Everyone in Germany will tell you that by the end of secondary education, they're just so done with the whole hitler thing. It's a huge topic throughout the educational system. So I guess morals and things like why privacy matters gets ingrained as well? But that doesn't hold for other European countries, in NL the Linux/Threema/OSM/PGP usage is similar to what I hear on HN. So a combination of factors, with as biggest common denominator probably pedestrians, plus the mindset in Germany, and maybe a tiny fraction the cyclists (which is literally everyone in NL, by the way, it's not a subgroup but a state of being, or at least I learned that "cyclists" is a laden term in North America from someone who is from there and moved here, but anyway OSM contributorship in NL isn't that huge).
• Pinus 6y ago
  Right now, it's evening in Europe, meaning that those who have been out collecting data during the day have now come home, had a shower (or brushed the snow off, in my case), relaxed a bit, downloaded their GPX tracks to their computers, and started editing. In the US, those doing boots-on-the-ground mapping are still out.
• fancyfish 6y ago
  My guess is historically North America has had better coverage from Google Maps and the lie, so less incentive to build a crowdsourced alternative.