Reverse geocoding API to check if location is residential

Question

I'm using several reverse geocoding options such as Foursquare, Google, and OpenStreetMap to retrieve place information, but the one type of place that none of these seem to be able to do is residential areas.

Simply put, I want to know if a given lat/long belongs to a residential area or property.

OpenStreetMap seems to be the closest to a solution as it marks some roads as residential, but I don't know of an OSM API that would allow me to see if, given a lat/long, the corresponding property lies on a residential road. Nominatim only gives the single closest entry.

I don't mind paying.

Answer 1

It looks like Gisgraphy should fit your needs. Here's the output from an example query:

<results>
  <numFound>1</numFound>
  <QTime>519</QTime>
  <result>
    <name>Elenis Palaiologou</name>
    <distance>9.3785112</distance>
    <gid>207699655</gid>
    <openstreetmapId>202995032</openstreetmapId>
    <streetType>RESIDENTIAL</streetType>
    <oneWay>true</oneWay>
    <countryCode>CY</countryCode>
    <length>143.038762237</length>
    <lat>35.17133607836711</lat>
    <lng>33.36918811504461</lng>
    <isIn>Nicosia</isIn>
    <isInAdm>Λευκωσία - Lefkoşa</isInAdm>
    <adm1Name>Λευκωσία - Lefkoşa</adm1Name>
    <adm2Name>Λευκωσία - Lefkoşa</adm2Name>
    <fullyQualifiedName>Elenis Palaiologou, Nicosia, Λευκωσία - Lefkoşa</fullyQualifiedName>
    <lanes>2</lanes>
    <azimuthStart>63</azimuthStart>
    <azimuthEnd>31</azimuthEnd>
    <label>Elenis Palaiologou, Nicosia</label>
    <labelPostal>Elenis Palaiologou, Nicosia</labelPostal>
    <source>OSM</source>
  </result>
  <attributions>http://www.gisgraphy.com/attributions.html</attributions>
</results>

The attribute you are after is <streetType>RESIDENTIAL</streetType>.

Gisgraphy offers API access. I haven't checked their prices, but it seems they have a free and a premium service. Apart from that, you can also install the software on your own server, as it is available at Github. For details on how to use the API, please refer to their API reference. "Street type" is dealt with in chapter 7.

Oh: And as you can see by <source>OSM</source> it is using OpenStreetMap :)

Answer 2

I've found that using the OpenStreetMap Overpass API gives what I need. You can write a query in Overpass Query Language or XML to search OSM for nodes, ways and relations tagged as "residential":

[out:json][timeout:25];
(
  node["landuse"="residential"](around:100,52.637580,1.297785);
  way["landuse"="residential"](around:100,52.637580,1.297785);
  relation["landuse"="residential"](around:100,52.637580,1.297785);
);
out body;
>;
out skel qt;

There's an online interpreter here: http://overpass-turbo.eu/

And an API endpoint here: https://z.overpass-api.de/api/interpreter