OSM loader - POIs that are ways in OSM

[JosephineRoper]

In my city there are many points of interest that are not represented as nodes in OpenStreetMap, but rather ways around a building area. I usually deal with this by taking the centroids of relevant closed ways and treating them as nodes.

I wrote a simple addition to the OSM loader tonight that uses a "way_query" to download ways using the Overpass output option 'center': "adds the center of the object's boundingbox to the output, not guaranteed to be on the object's area." I think this would work fine for the cases I am looking at. It might introduce inaccuracy for large or oddly shaped POIs (if someone requested parks, for example).

Is this something wanted in pandana? Should I raise a PR?

[Rikuoja]

This sounds like a useful feature in my opinion too, we have a similar need for considering also polygon POIs.