Empty landuse vs penalty for developed land

[westis]

I realized that if a small area is not tagged with any landuse or natural tag, it seemingly counts just like "non-green" landuse such as developed land (particularly industrial, commercial and construction, but also residential).

Apart from giving positive green index for green areas, what about also giving a penalty to explicitly tagged developed land?

Cities are often better mapped than rural areas or "green" areas in the outskirts of a city. It's then more likely that an area without any landuse tags may actually be "green" too. Obviously this can't be taken for granted, and they can't count the same as explicitly tagged green areas. But they also shouldn't count as bad as explicitly tagged developed land.

Furthermore, although roads are getting a lower weight later on, what if a way also gets a penalty if there's a big road within the 30m buffer zone? A way that is close to a big road (which may have noisy traffic) should probably not get as high green index as a way that is further away from big roads.and therefore getting a lower green index already from the beginning.

[samcrawford]

All good ideas, and I think these are doable. Maybe untagged landuse could even be treated differently if it's contained within a city boundary vs not.

[westis]

We have discussed city boundaries a bit in the Swedish OSM community. Most towns or cities don't have any official boundaries, so most often the name of the city/town is just a single node. I suppose there may be other ways to find out if it's an urban or rural area, which would be good to consider also for roads. Not sure how though.