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Deep dives on open geospatial data, API design, and building map-powered applications.
Case Study: How Urban Sun Finder Scores Sunlight Using OSM Building Footprints
How a real Nordic sunlight-prediction app uses OSM building heights and footprints for shadow analysis, and why the Features API beats vector tiles.
How is the Features API different from Vector Tiles?
Vector tiles and the OSM Features API solve different problems. Tiles render a basemap fast; the Features API returns full OSM tags and unclipped geometry so you can query and compute on the map, not just draw it.
Building the New OSM Features API: A Planet-Scale Overpass Alternative
How we built a production OSM Features API on PostGIS: scaling the import to the full planet, the 1.5 TB storage footprint, the indexes that make popular-tag queries fast, and real measured performance against public Overpass.