Among the things that have changed, since I was previously an active in 2010, is the way parking lots are defined. When there were none on the map, a parking lot area appeared to be a Public Parking Area, such as one that you might see on a road sign. The information seemed to be directing you toward a widely acceptable place for parking.

Today, every flat, paved place that one might find a few vehicles left turned off has a parking polygon. So, the meaning of the map has changed, but the data structure has had trouble keeping pace.

I have learned about how parking lots are used in today’s OSM. I have attempted to add the “access” tag to the parking lots in my area, including the data that I entered many years ago. The vast majority of parking lots are privately maintained, but without the “access” tag defined, the (unofficial) default is public since they are accessed through public roads. Certainly many renderers put a (P) symbol which is commonly used for Public Parking Areas. That means more work for the mappers. I spent many hours adding “access=customers” to commercial locations or the key “access=private” to more remote locations.

The examination of social structures is one thing that gets me so excited about mapping. And nothing looks at the public-private social contracts more closely than the “access” tag. We can talk about whether the data or the renderer should be defaulting to public or private, but it comes down to this basic question: “Who is permitted to use that place?” Some of the information in OSM is the very complicated answer to that question. Little wonder it is hard to keep that data correlated with our assumptions.