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Module - Module 2: Context

Metabolism of Cities Education Hub
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Tip: https://mapshaper.org/ You can upload a shapefile zip file to this website and preview it's contents.


Thanks María Gracia, very good tip! I have added this in the description as well and am including this in future recordings as well, it's very nice that site!


Hi Paul,
do you know of any way to download a shapefile from OpenStreetMap? For instance, I'm looking to download the shapefile of the city of Lausanne see linkhttps://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1685018#map=13/46.5535/6.6523.
There is probably a download link somewhere but can't seem to find it.


Yeah there is a way to download it, but in principle OpenStreetMap isn't ideal as it isn't the author of the shapefile. Is there no way to get the shapefile from the authority?


Indeed, but the municipality is really "stingy" in terms of providing non-copyrighted shapefiles.


Okay yeah quite terrible with these Swiss policies. But I had a look at the shapefile you linked, but the owner of this is still the Swiss government. It comes from here. So their terms still apply, even if you download it from OpenStreetMap. So I would say either let's find out if we can meet their requirements, or we'll have to find another data owner who provides better terms... :-(


Hmm ok, I will continue to have a look. I kinda hoped that if it came from OSM we could use them freely :'(


Yeah too bad indeed. In principle we can, but only if people uploaded information that they were indeed allowed to upload. The same applies to our system. If someone uploads protected data and says it's open source it doesn't really make it open source...


After all, this was resolved by talking with the administrations themselves and they were very kind to help us use the data freely although they would be interested to know how many people have downloaded data from the Lausanne hub for instance.

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