How do I map a parking lot that encircles a store?

A lot of shopping center developments have "outlot" stores (often restaurants), and sometimes completely stand-alone buildings will also have parking lots that entirely circle the building. I can see three plausible ways to map this:

Make the parking lot a solid rectangle (or whatever) and map the building as being contained in the parking lot
Make the parking lot shaped like a C-clamp and close that gap with a self-edge (i.e. faking up a 'hole' in the parking lot but keeping it topologically simple), then put the building inside the "hole"
Make the parking lot actually have a hole in it, and put the building inside the hole.

The first is unquestionably the easiest to do, but it is semantically unsatisfying (and also doesn't render very well in some cases). The second is a bit more work, is also a little unsatisfying but at least the building isn't "in" the parking lot. The third I'm not even sure how to do in something like Potlatch, but it's certainly more technically complicated; but semantically it seems to be the best match, if it's technically possible.

What is the received wisdom on this?

building topology parking

asked 28 Oct '12, 19:43

blahedo
736●11●19●28
accept rate: 50%

2 Answers:

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Your third option - make a hole in the parking lot and put the building inside the hole - is the correct and commonly used approach. Areas with holes are modelled as multipolygon relations in OSM. It's possible to create these with all of the mainstream editors.

Refer to the Relation:multipolygon wiki page for documentation, including Potlatch examples.

If the parking lot is directly adjacent to the building, you can re-use the building outline as the multipolygon's "inner" member.

permanent link

answered 28 Oct '12, 20:33

Tordanik
12.0k●15●106●147
accept rate: 35%

Ok, cool. Potlatch doesn't seem to be rendering it correctly but the data looks like it's in there (we'll see what Mapnik does with it).

(28 Oct '12, 22:10) blahedo

2	Third option is the way to go. You can use multipolygon relations for it. permanent link answered 28 Oct '12, 20:13 RM87 3.3k●2●37●53 accept rate: 22%

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building ×252
parking ×71
topology ×5

question asked: 28 Oct '12, 19:43

question was seen: 4,178 times

last updated: 28 Oct '12, 22:10

How do I map a parking lot that encircles a store?

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