One of the greatest things in OpenStreetMap is that, when you start looking beyond the basic features, the amount of details and specific themes you can use to enrich the map is practically endless (special mention for the guard stones mapping)

An example which may go unnoticed at first is playground mapping. I became interested in this due to the frequent visits, and I started as usual from the wiki.

The goal of this post is to have a quick summary on how to map playgrounds in order to hopefully help fellow mappers around the world interested in this topic.

Why

Because having the data in OpenStreetMap will allow your favorite app/website to let you search and display easily the existing playgrounds and their features, removing one more reason to use other providers, while making kids and parents happy.

How to map

Level 0 - starter

Minimal mapping is to place a node tagged with leisure=playground in the playground location.

Note: in some places you can also find single play installations which are not part of a playground, those can be mapped directly as nodes without a playground.

Level 1 - basic

Map the playground as an area and add tag leisure=playground and any other relevant tag on it (wheelchair access, minimal age and so on). This opens up the possibility to go further into details as explained just below.

If the playground has a fence, you can also add that to the playground area with the relative gates (and possibly some footways to reach them for the routing engines!)

Level 2 - medium

Map the devices and installations as nodes within the playground area. You can find a detailed list of possible values on the wiki.

Besides that, you can also map any additional amenity like benches or drinking water that are located within the playground area.

Level 3 - advanced

Going further, each attraction can also be mapped as an area instead of a simple node. This can be probably overkill in many cases, but it can be interesting especially for playground structures, which can be formed by different parts (slides, stairs and so on) which can be tagged within the area.

Tools to map playgrounds

For mapping play equipment as nodes I use with great satisfaction Every Door, which offers also useful presets with the known tags. The main limitation for this use case is that since it is a POI oriented editor, you need to map areas separately, so you can’t go from 0 to level 2 only using only Every Door.

To overcome this, you can create initially the areas with iD, JOSM or any equivalent tool and then continue mapping with Every Door or any alternative POI editor.

Usage/Rendering

Basic rendering (level 0/1) is supported by the vast majority of apps and website. Apart from that, the level of details shown/used depends on the specific rendering/app, and some of them may be more detailed than others. For example, OsmAnd shows also the devices and installations in the playgrounds, while Organic Maps is not showing them.

For some regions, there are also specific renderings like https://playguide.eu/ which besides showing the detail for each playground, includes also reviews and pictures making the experience very pleasant. Another specific rendering is available on mapcomplete.

Conclusion

Playgrounds are probably a niche topic, but it is one of the small things that help increase overall OpenStreetMap coverage and usage, so happy mapping!