One Planet Sutton

Over 25 local people including councillors, mapping enthusiasts and OpenStreetMap volunteers turned out for our green mapping day in Worcester Park! On a sunny spring day we roved around the area adding in basic information like street types and names, as well as more unusual information like cycle parking facilities and bus stops.

Coverage of the London Borough of Sutton is now almost complete in OpenStreetMap, giving local groups an amazing free resource with which to create maps and analyse the local area.

We are putting the finishing touches on our Green Map of Sutton too, with the map key shaping up and the car club / cyclist information working nicely. We’re going to add in overlays for local photos, FixMyStreet issues and planning alerts too, and will expand the green shopping overlay with all the charity shops, independent green/fairtrade shops and anything else people think we should add. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment!

If all goes to plan, we’ll be able to bring together various local transport groups including the council’s green travel scheme, cycling groups, pedestrian/walking groups and others to collaborate with OSM. Some of those who came along all thought this was a great idea, so I’ll be chasing this up in the coming weeks.

The library we used as a venue also want a map of their area, so that’s something else to follow up. I’ll pop a copy on here for all to see, and am happy to do the same for free for any other local community centre / shop / etc. Just leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

Thanks especially to Alice from Smarter Travel Sutton, Charlotte and fellow volunteers from Living Streets / Cyclism, and Thomas and Philip who are local OpenStreetMap heroes, having single-handedly mapped most of the Borough themselves over the past year or so! Thomas and Philip are shown in this photo helping Alice to add in data after her first stroll around the area just to the North of Central Road.

We should be out and about again at the Move it at the Manor day in Manor Park, Sutton town centre. There we’ll aim to complete coverage of the pedestrianised shopping area, and again put in all the green travel options like cycle routes/parking and bus stops.

Look out for pedestrian and cycle routing too – we’re talking to some people in Cambridge and Germany who have great tools to help you find the quickest, quietest or safest route from A to B.

Come and join the OpenStreetMap community and put Worcester Park on the map. We’ll be walking around the area adding street names, libraries, pubs, playgrounds, parks, allotments, cinemas and other details to the map! More info on Sutton Active (thanks Adrian for all the help).

We’re in the process of building a green map of Sutton using OpenStreetMap, and Worcester Park is the last major area of Sutton with no coverage. With your help we are going to complete the Worcester Park area.

Why don’t we just use Google?

You can’t actually re-use, change or publish a lot of existing maps without violating copyright, so you’re stuck with Google’s or A-Z’s boring view designed for motorists. It can cost a lot of money!

OpenStreetMap is different – the data and the map images are available to everyone to use for free, so long as you credit the community when using them. Anyone can add to them – just like Wikipedia – so you can make the maps you want without the hassle or expense.

We’re making maps for cyclists, bus or car club users; maps showing where to buy local food; maps for heritage trails in Sutton. Once we all put in the basic data, we can make maps of anything easily!

So how will it work?

Just turn up! We’ll run workshops at 11am and 2pm for newcomers, and experienced mappers will be around to help you hit the streets and gather some data.