Great interview with the maintainer of a region-specific OpenStreetMap style called “OpenArdenneMap”, that’s been optimized for hiking in a specific region in the world (the Ardennes) while still being usable and forkable for use elsewhere.
I found this interview while researching tools I could use to make a print map of the neighborhood for my son (I ended up using QGIS). I’m inspired by this idea of region-specific cartography and site-specific digital tools:
To come back to OpenArdenneMap, as its name suggests, it’s designed for one region in particular: the Ardennes. A friend once asked me to produce a map of Brittany using OpenArdenneMap and then complained that the sea didn’t appear. Of course, there’s no sea in the Ardennes. Far from any chauvinism or nationalism, the idea is to create a rendering specific to a region, with its own characteristics and particular objects, and of course this can evolve over time. For example, there is a specific rendering in OpenArdenneMap for Christmas tree plantations, because they cover a large area in the Ardennes, perhaps 10% of the agricultural area. But this is a recent development, and it’s possible that in a few decades there won’t be any left.
One disadvantage of web maps is that we are witnessing a standardisation of styles, with styles that can be designed for a Californian environment and then applied in Europe: this makes no sense. Each region has its own geographical richness, the result of the evolution of the natural landscapes inhabited by the human communities who have lived there. And so each region is entitled to its own styles, which highlight its characteristics.