I'm working on a project where I need to find the number of parks (or Google Maps-designated “park” place types) within a given county. I’ve seen similar questions asked years ago, but the solutions seemed a bit outdated or insufficient. My current idea is to use the Google Places API to search for places with type park and count the number of unique place_ids returned. However, the challenge is that counties aren’t perfect squares, and I haven’t found a straightforward way to define a county’s polygon or bounding area using lat/lng coordinates. Has anyone dealt with something similar or have ideas on how to approach this? Appreciate any helps before I start investing money into this!

Many thanks!

I'm working on a project where I need to find the number of parks (or Google Maps-designated “park” place types) within a given county. I’ve seen similar questions asked years ago, but the solutions seemed a bit outdated or insufficient. My current idea is to use the Google Places API to search for places with type park and count the number of unique place_ids returned. However, the challenge is that counties aren’t perfect squares, and I haven’t found a straightforward way to define a county’s polygon or bounding area using lat/lng coordinates. Has anyone dealt with something similar or have ideas on how to approach this? Appreciate any helps before I start investing money into this!

Many thanks!

• google-maps
• google-places-api
• google-places-aggregate-api

• Note the Places API won't work anymore, see my answer here: stackoverflow/questions/79516307/… – Starship Remembers Shadow Commented Mar 23 at 2:18

1 Answer 1

There is a separate API for that: the [Places Aggregate API](https://developers.google/maps/documentation/places-aggregate/overview):

$ curl --location 'https://areainsights.googleapis/v1:computeInsights' \
--header 'X-Goog-Api-Key: YOUR_API_KEY_HERE' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
   "insights":[
      "INSIGHT_COUNT"
   ],
   "filter":{
      "locationFilter":{
         "region":{
            "place":"places/ChIJlfCemC71pRIRkn_qeNc-yQc"
         }
      },
      "typeFilter":{
         "includedTypes":[
            "park"      
         ]
      } 
   }                     
}'                                   
{
  "count": "342"
}

Places API search methods are intended to be used only in areas much smaller than most countries, so that's not likely to work out well for you. Even with the Places Aggregate API, there is a limit to the size of [location_filter](https://developers.google/maps/documentation/places-aggregate/request-parameters?_gl=1*ced61l*_up*MQ..*_ga*ODQ3MTQyNzYxLjE3NDI5MTQ0ODA.*_ga_NRWSTWS78N*MTc0MjkxNDQ4MC4xLjEuMTc0MjkxNDg0NC4wLjAuMA..#location_filter) (2 trillion square meters) which means the bigger countries won't fit; e.g. Northern Territory and New South Wales fit in that limit, but Western Territory does not.