Area Place: footprint or fence line?
This is an effort to determine consensus, hopefully global (don't ), on if and when to use the Area Place to delineate a building outline/footprint as opposed to the property or complex on which the building stands (the "fence line").
Before Places, the US de facto Landmark guidance did not support the mapping of building footprints. It used the words "mapped at the fence line" for all larger complexes that might include both parking and one or more buildings.
Meanwhile some other countries were more flexible about landmarking building footprints and parking separately. In the UK and Europe, especially, it is more likely that parking at large complexes is public and general-purpose; this no doubt played a role in that convention.
With the advent of Places, it is no longer necessary to create multiple landmarks in a complex to identify multiple functions, because a single Area Place can support as many categories as necessary. Meanwhile, Point Places allow marking of specific destinations within an Area Place. This change in functionality suggests to me that granting an Area Place to an individual building's footprint, separate from its parking and from neighboring buildings in the complex, no longer has any purpose besides the cosmetic utility of displaying building outlines in the client (for some visually significant structures that are not surrounded by acres of parking that might still be very nice).
However, the current worldwide Places wiki includes a guidance figure depicting a mall landmarked to its building footprint. So I am wondering if global consensus is in fact going the opposite direction, towards increased use of building-footprint Area Places. The guidance is live and editors are referring to it as an example, but more than one editor has noticed that the figure represents a departure from past US guidance.
The new capabilities of Places lead me to favor the "fence line" approach to Area Places in nearly all cases. But either way it would be extremely helpful to have clarity of consensus!
Before Places, the US de facto Landmark guidance did not support the mapping of building footprints. It used the words "mapped at the fence line" for all larger complexes that might include both parking and one or more buildings.
Meanwhile some other countries were more flexible about landmarking building footprints and parking separately. In the UK and Europe, especially, it is more likely that parking at large complexes is public and general-purpose; this no doubt played a role in that convention.
With the advent of Places, it is no longer necessary to create multiple landmarks in a complex to identify multiple functions, because a single Area Place can support as many categories as necessary. Meanwhile, Point Places allow marking of specific destinations within an Area Place. This change in functionality suggests to me that granting an Area Place to an individual building's footprint, separate from its parking and from neighboring buildings in the complex, no longer has any purpose besides the cosmetic utility of displaying building outlines in the client (for some visually significant structures that are not surrounded by acres of parking that might still be very nice).
However, the current worldwide Places wiki includes a guidance figure depicting a mall landmarked to its building footprint. So I am wondering if global consensus is in fact going the opposite direction, towards increased use of building-footprint Area Places. The guidance is live and editors are referring to it as an example, but more than one editor has noticed that the figure represents a departure from past US guidance.
The new capabilities of Places lead me to favor the "fence line" approach to Area Places in nearly all cases. But either way it would be extremely helpful to have clarity of consensus!
Re: Area Place: footprint or fence line?