Reporter: dieterdreist
[Submitted to the original trac issue database at 11.50am, Saturday, 19th April 2008]

When area=yes is applied to a highway, this generally means that someone put the OUTLINE of a square or parking-lot, or pedestrian zone. This is different to our usual habit to mark the center of the streets. Therefore, the rendered area should ONLY be rendered TOWARDS THE INSIDE of the area (rather then taking the border of the center of the outline for the rendered area as it is now), as it otherwise is too big and will go over adjacent buildings, partially covering and hiding them (because you often have the situation, that a pedestrian zone shares nodes with adjacent buildings). An example for this can be found here:
http://www.informationfreeway.org/?lat=41.858404801802635&lon=12.476567946165773&zoom=17&layers=B000F000F

I would not recommend to simply render the buildings in a later phase of rendering (putting the on top), as there are some cases, where highways and even squares are ontop of buildings.