The shapes and patterns of the road network of a topographic map provide important visual cues when interpreting the map and moving between scales in interactive environments. The ’city ring road’ is an example of a road structure we might use in the recognition and characterisation of a city. Our goal is the automatic identification (and preservation) of such structures through changing scales. In this preliminary study, we conducted an online survey and face to face interviews in order to obtain and prioritise the structural, topological and semantic properties that define ’ring road-ness’. We then created a practical ontology of ring roads, with a view to algorithm implementation that mirrors the human perception of ring roads.