a shopping mall or “shopping center” in the North American sense or a “shopping centre” in the European sense. Broadly speaking, given a single building with multiple commercial retail stores where the entrances to the stores let onto a common enclosed area, this may be referred to as a shopping mall. In this case, the entrances typically face inward or toward one another. This tag may also be applied to the arrangement where there are multiple buildings, each with multiple commercial retail stores whose entrances are on the outer margins of the buildings.
This would seem to imply that a shopping centre that consists of a large domain with parking and several buildings with loads of shops would, as a whole, also be considered a shop=mall. (let’s call these type 2 malls)
That definition seems to have been there for at least 15 years.
Looking at the data, that’s not what happens. Almost 75% of shop=mall also has a building tag, and they rarely have a landuse tag (which I would expect for the kind of shopping center I describe above).
If shop=mall can be either thing, then a tag clarifying if it’s atrium-based or with shops reachable from the outside would be necessary to differentiate between the types.
On the other side, if only malls with indoor entrances are shop=mall, does that mean a place with two buildings which both serve as a mall in the strict sense should be mapped as two objects? Or should we unify them in a relation?
If type 2 malls are not shop=mall, the most likely tag would be landuse=retail, with a name. However this tag is widely (ab)used for other stuff, typically repeating data mapped on a shop or that should be landuse=commercial instead. Is landuse=retail + name=* enough for this kind of object (if we clean all the wrong uses and remove any object that also has a shop=* tag), or should we have a tag for this kind of place specifically?
No, it would imply that trying to over-interpret the wiki is wrong**.
Shopping centres come in all shapes and sizes. Some are all under one roof, some are under more than one roof but still one place, like this one. If it looks like one shopping centre to someone shopping there, I’d suggest that it is one shopping centre, even if there is more than one building.
** someone clearly used “more than one shop in one building” to differentiate from individual shops, and likely for reasons of clarity and ease of communication didn’t add lots of subordinate clauses describing what might and might not fit the category.
a shop=mall (a shopping mall or “shopping center” in the North American sense or a “shopping centre” in the European sense) is a group of multiple retail and commercial businesses, grouped together as part of one named complex. The complex may consist of either one, or multiple, building/s. Individual stores may be accessed internally from a common enclosed area, externally from the outside of the building, or from both.
Personally, as a speaker of en_CA_Jarek, I consider a shopping mall to be one building (possibly a very large one), and multi-building shopping areas to instead be “shopping centres” or “retail areas”
I didn’t write the Wikipedia article or the Wikidata summary. Try going there in January and let me know how you like it as a mall
OSM tag usage pulled up by Joost seems pretty clear despite OSM wiki saying something else. I’m not sure making OSM wiki say something else in other, more explicit words will convince mappers.
One thing to keep in mind is that this is very context, and especially, climate, dependent. In areas that are warm year round, a shopping mall that would in other places be fully enclosed will have a mix of indoor and outdoor spaces. Such places are very much malls to me (a US English speaker), and I’d oppose any change to the wiki that would invalidate that tagging. Here are some major malls that fit what I mean, from California, many parts of which typically have a pleasant climate year-round:
The commonality these places have with a single-building mall is that they’re self-contained (you enter from the outside then walk from shop to shop) and typically have anchor stores, usually multiple shop=department_store. The hallways just happen to not have roofs essentially.
It doesn’t seem that clear to me! If 75% of malls are tagged on buildings, then 25% are not, indicating a mix that I wouldn’t be surprised exists given the diversity of climates and development styles around the world. I’m also not totally sure what is gained by having a separate subtag for partly outdoor shopping areas, but not overly opposed I guess.
Just to compare and contrast, here are some shopping areas from the same region that I wouldn’t consider malls, and indeed are not mapped in OSM as such (they’re all named landuse=retail areas).
While somewhat similar at first glance, you can see these have all their shops oriented facing their parking lots, rather than the parking lots surrounding a core shopping area. Maybe this could be a useful diagnostic, although I’m sure it varies from area to area depending on the development style. The anchor shops are also less important, often supermarkets or other shops rather than department stores. I think these are fine tagged as named retail areas.
“Outlets” are usually =mall . One possible criteria is they have a single collective identity (inside such a shopping center), and the tenants rent the mall’s store space. The mall will advertise itself, and its tenants.
Malls are surely not limited to single-building. =mall + building= would include some duplicates of adding =mall to every building= of malls spanning multiple buildings and even lots. That’s a common mistake.
To illustrate from a simple example, one of the largest malls near Tokyo is a =mall , with 3 free-standing wings. It should even be brand:en=LaLaport , that’s how consistent the branding is, as extensive as internationally. Way: LaLaport (181313049) | OpenStreetMap
Thanks for the examples Wilkniss, I think the not-that-subtle differences between your series of examples makes things rather clear. I would propose to rewrite the wiki a little bit to fit this.
The tag shop=mall refers generally to a shopping mall or “shopping center” in the North American sense or a “shopping centre” in the European sense. Broadly speaking, given a single building with multiple commercial retail stores where the entrances to the stores let onto a common enclosed area, this may be referred to as a shopping mall. In this case, the entrances typically face inward or toward one another. This tag may also be applied to the arrangement where there are multiple buildings, each with multiple commercial retail stores whose entrances are on the outer margins of the buildings.Some malls are not entirely within a single building, but have “outside corridors” or some arrangement where most traffic from shop to shop is by enclosed mostly pedestrian areas. Shopping centres where most shops are accessed directly from parking areas and users generally drive up to the specific shops they need are generally not mapped as shop=mall.
Does that make sense?
For my use case (focused on “risk”), current mapping practices actually make sense. Some processing might be required to exclude “outdoor malls”, but they don’t really exist in northern Europe much anyway.
Still feels a little weird to not have a specific way to identify areas like in Wilkniss’ second set of examples.
I didn’t write the Wikipedia article or the Wikidata summary. Try going there in January and let me know how you like it as a mall 
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