{"id":1827506,"date":"2024-02-13T10:25:36","date_gmt":"2024-02-13T15:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/?p=1827506"},"modified":"2024-02-13T10:25:36","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T15:25:36","slug":"vector-tiles-are-coming-to-openstreetmap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2024\/02\/vector-tiles-are-coming-to-openstreetmap\/","title":{"rendered":"Vector Tiles Are Coming to OpenStreetMap"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the OpenStreetMap blog, an announcement that vector tiles will be coming to OSM later this year<\/a>. This is a significant, if belated technical change: other map platforms moved to vector mapping years ago (Google announced the change<\/a> in 2013). But there are reasons for the delay:<\/p>\n

Vector tiles have become industry standard in interactive maps that, unlike openstreetmap.org, don\u2019t get updated often, and where you can simply recalculate your whole database occasionally.<\/p>\n

But the map displayed on openstreetmap.org are quite uniquely different! They get updated incrementally and constantly, a minute after you edit; it\u2019s a critical part of the feedback loop to mappers\u2014and how the author of this blog post got hooked in the first place. This is why we have to invest in our own vector tile software stack.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The switch to vector tiles, the post goes on to say, will enable all sorts of dynamic changes to the map: \u201c3d maps, more efficient data mixing and matching and integration of other datasets, thematic styles, multilingual maps, different views for administrative boundaries, interactive points of interest, more accessible maps for vision-impaired users, and I\u2019m sure many other ideas that no one has come up with yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the OpenStreetMap blog, an announcement that vector tiles will be coming to OSM later this year. This is a significant, if belated technical change: other map platforms moved to vector mapping years ago (Google… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[386],"class_list":["post-1827506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-web-mapping","tag-openstreetmap","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1844773,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2025\/07\/vector-tiles-arrive-on-openstreetmap\/","url_meta":{"origin":1827506,"position":0},"title":"Vector Tiles Arrive on OpenStreetMap","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"23 July 2025","format":"link","excerpt":"Vector tiles have been deployed on OpenStreetMap (see the \u201cShortbread\u201d layer in the map layers menu). This technical upgrade was first announced last year; it\u2019ll provide, they say, \u201ca visual layer that is sharper and quicker, based on an entirely new backend.\u201d","rel":"","context":"In "Web Mapping"","block_context":{"text":"Web Mapping","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/web-mapping\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5311,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2012\/04\/openstreetmap-in-watercolour\/","url_meta":{"origin":1827506,"position":1},"title":"OpenStreetMap in Watercolour","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"2 April 2012","format":"link","excerpt":"The ability to use other map styles with OpenStreetMap data is, I think, underexploited. I'm starting to hate the default Mapnik tiles. Stamen Design has released three different\u2014vividly different\u2014map styles for OpenStreetmap: watercolour tiles (above), high-contrast black-and-white, and shaded terrain. Via Daring Fireball.","rel":"","context":"In "Web Mapping"","block_context":{"text":"Web Mapping","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/web-mapping\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5240,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2011\/09\/openstreetmap-in-ottawa\/","url_meta":{"origin":1827506,"position":2},"title":"OpenStreetMap in Ottawa","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"2 September 2011","format":"link","excerpt":"I nearly forgot to mention that last Sunday I gave a presentation on the state of OpenStreetMap in Ottawa to the SummerCamp 2011 Mapping Party. It was a small group -- five of us, the majority of whom knew more about the subject than I did -- and, due to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "My Stuff"","block_context":{"text":"My Stuff","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/my-stuff\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1833522,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2024\/08\/openstreetmap-is-20-years-old\/","url_meta":{"origin":1827506,"position":3},"title":"OpenStreetMap Is 20 Years Old","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"9 August 2024","format":"link","excerpt":"OpenStreetMap is celebrating its 20th anniversary today. It was originally created in response to restrictive Ordnance Survey licensing in the U.K., in a context that seems unrecognizable today. Founder Steve Coast writes about the anniversary (mirror link). \u201cAllowing volunteers to edit a map in 2004 was simply anathema and bordering\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Web Mapping"","block_context":{"text":"Web Mapping","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/web-mapping\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1832195,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2024\/06\/openstreetmap-is-dealing-with-some-vandalism\/","url_meta":{"origin":1827506,"position":4},"title":"OpenStreetMap Is Dealing with Some Vandalism","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"19 June 2024","format":"link","excerpt":"It seems OpenStreetMap has had to deal with a wave of vandalism attacks lately. If you see some nonsense on OSM, this post on their community forum outlines what to do about it (it may have already been taken care of even if it\u2019s still appearing, so check for that;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Map Errors"","block_context":{"text":"Map Errors","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/map-errors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1790245,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2021\/02\/100-million-edits-to-openstreetmap\/","url_meta":{"origin":1827506,"position":5},"title":"100 Million Edits to OpenStreetMap","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"25 February 2021","format":"link","excerpt":"The 100 millionth edit to OpenStreetMap was uploaded today, the OpenStreetMap Blog reports. \u201cThis milestone represents the collective contribution of nearly 1 billion features globally in the past 16+ years, by a diverse community of over 1.5 million mappers.\u201d","rel":"","context":"In "Web Mapping"","block_context":{"text":"Web Mapping","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/web-mapping\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1827506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1827506"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1827506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1827510,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1827506\/revisions\/1827510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1827506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1827506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1827506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}