Street Mapping

[Red Adder]

Taste varies - see the Sydney Olympic park in the latest CS page 18. I think the the colour variation works really well - though I was mistified by the vegetaion boundary in the hard surface around #11 - its actually the edge of an area of posts) - and the grey bits that look a bit like Emit brickettes are actully some sort of tower - strange choice of symbol there then.

[Scott]

I don't think it looks as bad if large parts of the map are pedestrianized paved areas - as on the Sydney map, and on some campus maps. If there were no colour distinctions on that Sydney map, having an ISSOM black border line would still be helpful for navigation. But on urban maps which are primarily a grid of streets with narrow pavements alongside, dark-coloured streets with a thin light-coloured border are less helpful.

[Scott]

This is the sort of thing that I'm not a fan of - the difference in shading here isn't really adding much to the navigation:

13.jpg (27.19 KiB) Viewed 5382 times

[Note that this map extract is out-of-context, and I wasn't even at this event, so no specific criticism is intended - it just happened to be the last map I could recall seeing this on.]

[DJM]

Something else which adds nothing (rather than not much) to the navigation is the depiction of OOB areas within building boundaries. It looks as if many of the olive green areas shown in Scott's map extract cannot be seen by runners at street level(helicopter-O might achieve this however) so there is absolutely no point in including them on the map.

[Roger]

Something else which adds nothing (rather than not much) to the navigation is the depiction of OOB areas within building boundaries. It looks as if many of the olive green areas shown in Scott's map extract cannot be seen by runners at street level ... so there is absolutely no point in including them on the map.

Not convinced on this. Although they're a bit tenuous, I can think of three possible reasons for including such areas:

1. Visible but not accessible. It's possible that some of the buildings have archways (particularly where the roads are shown as going 'into' the building) that are not on the map because they're never going to be open to competitors. However, if you saw a parking area in the middle of what was meant to be a solid building then you might get confused.

2. Pragmatism. For the first Oxford City race, the quadrangles of many of the Oxford colleges were mapped with the normal 'in bounds' paving and grass. Those for which permission wasn't obtained (or was withdrawn following a change of date) were changed to olive green on the competition map to ensure that people didn't try to use them as routes. It would then have been fairly simple to change back to the original depiction if permission was obtained after all, without having to start again with a reference copy of the map that didn't include things like the temporary building works.

3. Local knowledge. Even if the interior of a building is invisible, someone who knows the area (and e.g. has visited the local library with its internal courtyard) may be able to sort out which building is which from the shapes on the map. You may argue that this is unfair, but is it better for the map to lie?

[DJM]

Visible but not accessible. It's possible that some of the buildings have archways (particularly where the roads are shown as going 'into' the building) that are not on the map because they're never going to be open to competitors. However, if you saw a parking area in the middle of what was meant to be a solid building then you might get confused.

No problem. I was referring only to buildings where the inside was not visible.

Pragmatism. For the first Oxford City race, the quadrangles of many of the Oxford colleges were mapped with the normal 'in bounds' paving and grass. Those for which permission wasn't obtained (or was withdrawn following a change of date) were changed to olive green on the competition map to ensure that people didn't try to use them as routes. It would then have been fairly simple to change back to the original depiction if permission was obtained after all, without having to start again with a reference copy of the map that didn't include things like the temporary building works.

OK - but I guess that the whole of each building block could have been greyed out instead.

Local knowledge. Even if the interior of a building is invisible, someone who knows the area (and e.g. has visited the local library with its internal courtyard) may be able to sort out which building is which from the shapes on the map. You may argue that this is unfair, but is it better for the map to lie?

Yes - it most certainly is unfair! And, no, omitting information is not lying!!

[graeme]

Something else which adds nothing (rather than not much) to the navigation is the depiction of OOB areas within building boundaries.

Disagree.
The olive green immediately tells you you cant get through there, and so it saves you looking around the boundary for ways through. And it is correct - it is OOB!
How else would you map those areas?

[mharky]

If you look at many continental sprint maps they adopt this style of filling in buildings unless you're actually allowed in there. The Venice map is a classic example.

Graeme, think about a typical Marchmont tenement block, a massive rectangle with a garden in the middle that can only be accessed through the private stairwells. You could either map the gardens as olive green or just fill the building in completely. It should be impossible for people to get in there. However olive green king of implies that you can get in there, but it is OOB. Filling it in grey just means there is less detail on the map to complicate things.

Doing this also makes it look less like you've just ripped off the OS Digimap. I'm amazed at some of the detail people (self included) are able to put to the inside walls of courtyards which are entirely enclosed by private buildings...

[DJM]

The olive green immediately tells you you cant get through there

... so does a solid block of grey, which is the alternative I was envisaging (as per Mharky).

And ISSOM agrees with this too! See section 526.1 Building, which includes:-

Areas totally contained within a building shall be mapped as being a part of the building.

[Angry Haggis]

The olive green immediately tells you you cant get through there

... so does a solid block of grey, which is the alternative I was envisaging (as per Mharky).

And ISSOM agrees with this too! See section 526.1 Building, which includes:-

Areas totally contained within a building shall be mapped as being a part of the building.

Many of the blocks on the City of London map have internal courtyards, but are mapped as solid grey blocks. e.g. the Bank of England. If you end up in that courtyard, something's gone very wrong...

[graeme]

I stand corrected.

[NickC]

It might seem a silly point but the olive green makes the map a lot "lighter" to read whilst running. I struggle to see the other detail against the building grey.

[epocian]

It might seem a silly point but the olive green makes the map a lot "lighter" to read whilst running. I struggle to see the other detail against the building grey.

My advice would be never go to the Venice race - it's all grey!