Hi! Many apologies for any asphalt to paved change - I try to avoid that, but apologies if one has slipped through and I'll double-check this particular changeset to put it back.

highway=unclassified is generally used in OSM for minor roads of a principally rural nature, whereas =residential is intended for residential roads in built-up areas. 

There is (famously) a long-standing issue in the US in that the TIGER import of 2007/08 brought in all A41 class roads as =residential, largely as a placeholder for future use. The TIGER import was famously problematic and fixing its many issues is a long-term project, to put it mildly. (As documented on the OSM wiki: "The large scale TIGER data input of United States street data overused the highway=residential tag. A significant proportion of these roads could be tagged as highway=unclassified or highway=tertiary under the guideline mentioned above.")

Something like the example you give, or https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/17166426 for another one, is much more akin to highway=unclassified in standard OSM usage than =residential.