[OSM-newbies] Rendered two ways; why?

[James Ewen]

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Isaac Wingfield <isw at witzend.com> wrote:

> But now another question: It appears that quite recently, a
> considerable part of both of those church properties have been
> relabeled to "amenity: parking", but I don't see how that can be
> right.

That's probably because some bored nitwit looking at the aerial
photography observed what appears to be a paved area with little lines
painted along the perimeter of the paved area in a regular pattern.
Those areas delineated by the lines appear to be about the right size
for a passenger vehicle to fit inside, and it appears that indeed in
at least some cases cars are actually parking in those spaces.

>From the description on the amenity:parking page:

***

A parking lot is an area reserved for parking cars, trucks,
motorcycles etc. Parking spaces along streets are currently not
tagged. Only parking lots of reasonable size are mapped, not every
place where a car could be parked.
The distinction between public parking lots, customer parking lots
(such as at cinemas etc.), and private parking lots (such as for staff
in a business park) is handled with access=* tags.

***

> The area is certainly not equivalent to a public parking area
> (which the blue "P" icon now on them suggests); it's church property
> and intended only for church use. So why is it proper to label it as
> "parking"?

The blue "P" icon might suggest public access parking to you, but
perhaps just parking to others. The blue "P" icon is only one
renderer's interpretation of the parking amenity tag.

The church property perimeter is tagged on the map, and the parking
area described is fully contained within that property. Why would one
assume that a parking area contained within the church property to be
a public parking space?

I guess if you really get down to it, there are no public parking
spaces anywhere. If someone has gone to the trouble of creating a
parking area, someone will have some claim of ownership. Psuedo-public
parking lots in the city are usually owned by a parking lot company,
or the city, or some other entity. Usually with restrictions which
might include payment requirements, or at the very least maximum
occupancy time restrictions.

Parking areas are usually created for the people accessing the nearby
amenities as a place to leave their vehicles, so really all parking
lots should be labelled as access:destination, even though the
access:destination wiki entry talks about that tag being applied to
ways and not areas.

Feel free to delete the parking areas. When one looks at the map of
the churches, they might think they would have a long walk ahead of
them as there's not much room on the streets for the attendees to
leave their vehicles. I would think that showing the onsite parking to
be a good thing.

James
VE6SRV