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With gen 3 around the corner, now is your last chance to get Open Street Maps edits out of the way.
For those unfamiliar:
Pogo uses OSM to determine certain biomes and nests. It's not 100% understood, but a lot of it has been confirmed through data collection and trial/error.
The simplest thing to determine is nests. Any area designated as a park, meadow, playground, or simply grass can become a nest. Other factors are in play, but it's not clear. My own personal research has shown that parks are your best bet. A lot of parks are not marked as parks in OSM, mostly in more rural areas. Make sure your local parks are actually marked as parks.
Biomes are a bit more tricky.
For instance, creeks, rivers, oceans, ponds, lakes, etc. are all biomes for water type spawns. But water biomes do not just show up around those areas. I have a neighborhood nearby that is fill with water spawns, but is nowhere near an actual body of water (I also checked OSM and nothing water related is marked there).
Anything marked as a "retail area" on OSM has a higher percentage of spawning Porygon, Chansey, and electric types.
Anything marked as "industrial area" has a higher chance of spawning poison types (Grimer, Koffing, etc)
Hospital grounds have a higher spawn rate of Koffing, Magnemite, Cubone, Chansey, and Misdreavus.
Retail areas that border rivers seem to almost always have a high spawn rate for Voltorb and Magnemite.
Like I said above, biomes are tricky. It's not always a guarantee. Niantic must be using some other factors to go along with OSM.
One last thing is footpaths. They are red dotted lines in OSM. Niantic places more spawns along them. So if any parks, trials, etc in your area are missing them, add them ASAP.
I would advise against making fake areas. Most cities have dedicated OSM autists who go around and watch every edit that is made. You will be banned if caught. Rural players probably have a better shot at this.
