How to fill water bodies with OSMnx in Python

Question

I currently use OSMnx for a project to draw road networks in an area.

I\'d now like to add water bodies so that we can clearly see which parts of an area are water and

Answer 1

This isn't perfect but it gets you nearly there:

import osmnx as ox
ox.config(log_console=True, use_cache=True)

# add more items here to get all the landforms you want
places = ['Manhattan, NY, USA', 'Brooklyn, NY, USA', 'Queens, NY, USA', 'Bronx, NY, USA']
land = ox.geocode_to_gdf(places)

# get the water bodies
left, bottom, right, top = land.total_bounds
bbox = top, bottom, right, left
poly = ox.utils_geo.bbox_to_poly(*bbox)
water = ox.geometries_from_polygon(poly, tags={'natural': 'water'})

# constrain the plotting window as desired
c = land.unary_union.centroid
bbox = ox.utils_geo.bbox_from_point((c.y, c.x), dist=12000)

water_color = 'blue'
land_color = '#aaaaaa'
fig, ax = ox.plot_footprints(water, bbox=bbox,
                             color=water_color, bgcolor=water_color,
                             show=False, close=False)
ax = land.plot(ax=ax, zorder=0, fc=land_color)

The key issue is that I'm currently unclear if OSM can be consistently queried for straightforward land vs water polygons (I don't normally work with land/water boundaries in my research). The places may be political boundaries, which could overlap with the water area in real life. You may want to experiment with what you query/plot as land vs water here.