Notes
This tool finds polygons (ways) in OpenStreetMap for the selected feature type and then calculates how many parks and how many homes you'd be able to have on the same footprint.
To use it, you need to create an area on the map. There are four ways to create an area:
- Click the at the top-left of the map then draw an area.
- Drag-and-drop a GeoJSON file onto the map.
- Click the icon to search for the outline of a UK local authority, ward, constituency, or MSOA from our Geography Bits repository.
- Click the icon to find an administrative outline from OpenStreetMap.
Once you have an area drawn on the map, click the "Parkulate!" button.
If you notice missing carparks, golf courses, brownfield land etc in your local area, you can go to OpenStreetMap and check if the feature exists and if it has been tagged correctly. Updates made to OpenStreetMap should filter through to this tool within a few hours.
Please note that the point of this tool is to give a rough idea of the scale of things. That means we've used simple calculations e.g. we add up all the area and divide by various population densities to estimate number of homes. Taking into account exactly how (or if) homes would (or could) be implemented in every specific piece of land in the world is a much harder job. Even if we could take all that into account it is unlikely to give figures that are wildly different from the simple calculation. We've rounded number of homes to show that there is some uncertainty.
† As of July 2020 the largest solar farm in the world was Bhadla Solar Park in Rajasthan. This covers 10,000 acres and has a generating capacity of 2,245 MW. This implies solar farms could generate around 0.23 MW per acre. In practice, when split across multiple smaller sites, at different latitudes, and in different weather conditions, turning the selected features into a solar farm would probably generate less power. The House of Commons Library (2015) estimate that 25 acres of land is required for every 5 MW and that solar farms power roughly 300 homes per MW.
Credits
This open source project is made possible thanks to other open source and open data projects:
