Talk:Hampton Roads

Consolidated Cities

We need to figure out how to treat something called consolidated cities. Long story short, some counties in the Hampton Roads decided to call themselves (consolidated) cities for legal reasons. They're still counties in almost every respect, they're county-sided, they have cities (some of them incorporated) and (unincorporated) towns within them, they have huge areas of farmland (except Newport News and Hampton), but for legal reasons their called cities.

It gets more confusing then that. These counties didn't keep their names when they became CCs. All of them renamed themselves and, except for Chesapeake, they took the name of their most prominent city. To use Suffolk as an example, we now have two Suffolks: the "county" (the CC, the former Nansemond County), the overwhelming majority of which is farmland, and the actual city. The question is how do we treat these CC's and their cities of the same name. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 20:59, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

You know what, it seams like tease Hampton Road articles aren't touched much anyway, so I'm just going to plunge forward and implement a partial solution or two. I'm not a local, but I am a Virginian. It's not like we need a complete solution this instant anyway. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 02:42, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I think we should treat these CC's as counties, scene for all piratical (non leaqgise) purposes that's what they are; "consolidated city" is just Virgina legalize for "county that a city is not allowed to annex land from", and plenty of county maps have no problem listing them as counties. For Newport News and Hampton the solution is easy, change the lead so it says "is a city and county". Those two are small and fully urbanized (like Arlington County) so it wouldn't mislead the traveler to call it a city, and that's all we need to bother the traveler with, no need to go off explaining Virgina legalize. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 03:06, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Chesapeake is pretty easy: It's northern part is two incorporated cities, but the locales wouldn't conceder them to be part of Chesapeake. Beast to use the term "Chesapeake County", which is sometimes used to refer to both the Chesapeake and the northern part collectively, and respect the local definition of Chesapeake. Chesapeake County needs to be devised up into regions anyway. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 14:19, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I think everything fits pretty neatly into the Hampton Roads region system now, Chesapeake was the real oddball out having two incorporated cities in it. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 14:50, 22 February 2014 (UTC) I'm pretty much done with Chesapeake, the thing I wasn't sure of was weather to call the center part "Central Chesapeake County" or "Northern Chesapeake". I was tempted to call it "Northern Chesapeake", but we don't want both a "Northern Chesapeake" and "Northern Chesapeake County", that's too confusing. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 14:40, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I actually think it was hasty to have divided this region into counties or anything at all. Currently it has a total of only 8 city articles but has a suggested 10 regions to hold those 8 cities. All the county articles need to be undone and we need to stick with this as the lowest level region article, with the cities directly under it, period, unless/until we reach a point where it's being overwhelmed with more city/town articles than we know what to do with.

As to your question, we don't actually care what type of entity things have officially been designated as. If you're at the center of a community and it feels/is considered a separate community rather than a neighborhood of another, and there is enough to say about it to make a separate article worthwhile, then make it a separate article. Just imagine you're on the phone with your friend who asks where you are, and you say "I'm in ___" or "I'm outside of ___", and go with whatever you'd be most likely to say in that blank. Texugo (talk) 20:50, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Hadn't occurred to me to think of it that way. I was thinking of it the other way around, that Hampton Roads is a huge area (bigger then Rhode Island I think), that that the traveler could really use a more local guide. By my line of thought, the lack of city articles would if anything only increase the need for county articles, sense otherwise the most local guide we would have for the travelers likely destination would be the "Hampton Roads" guide itself. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 23:38, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

And yes, it's not that we care what type of entity things have officially been designated as per sy, but (by my understanding) we generally use counties to serve the role of lowest level region article, since geographically counties are basically collections of cities. That wasn't really my main point tough, my main point was that consolidated city legalese there are two different things called Suffolk: the "county" which is usually called "Suffolk" rather then "Suffolk County" (tough that term is used in some maps and databases), and the actual city which is also called "Suffolk". Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk)

I think I figured that the lack of sub-regions was only because the article wasn't very devolved; like I said it didn't occur to me to not have sub-regions because of a lack of city articles. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 00:36, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, usually we try to avoid subdividing more than we need to, which means we don't subdivide a region until it starts to be overwhelmed with subdestinations, which this article is far from. Even when we do get to the point of subdividing at such a small grain, we generally try to avoid using counties unless each county is truly unique from the others and the tourist needs to be aware of them. In the vast majority of the US, to a traveller, knowing the name of the county you are in is merely meaningless trivia. Texugo (talk) 11:30, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

I understand why we would avoid subdividing more than we need to to a point, but for regions this huge it seams to me that subdividing would almost be a necessary to give the traveler useful information. I would agree with you if the only purpose of a sub-region were to hold cities, but isn't the purpose also to give local information that you wouldn't find on a huge region's guide? Is there some policy page or something about this?

What do we generally use instead of counties, because, with the exception of very devolved city guides or very undevolved large region guides, I've found that our lowest level US region articles are usually counties (e.g Northern Virginia, Philadelphia Region, Long Island)? As for Hampton Roads spisifly, my understanding is that the locales in the consolidated cities really identify with them; I don't know if the locales of the other counties would identify with them but in a google immige saerch for "hampton roads" map a third of what shoes up are maps showing the counties. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 19:36, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, you have just happened upon some of the few states which do have county-level articles, and perhaps even some of those are actually still just awaiting reorganization from that time when we started deprecating county-level articles. We intentionally got rid of lots and lots of county articles at some point a few years ago. The question to answer is: besides the arbitrary official boundaries drawn, do the destinations in that county somehow form a coherent unit that shares characteristics not shared by the surrounding counties? If the answer is "not especially" (which is most places), then you might try to find some other way to divide it, by geographical or economic features, for example.

And no, we don't want to subdivide out of proportion with the cities, because it spreads the information thinner over a larger number of articles and makes it harder for people to locate the information we do have. If at some point in the future our number of useful articles outgrows the regionification scheme, then we can always re-do it then. But in the meantime, there is certainly no advantage to using a region scheme of less than one city per region article. Far from it. Texugo (talk) 19:50, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

That actually mirrors a thought I had about perhaps reorganizing Northern Virginia and making the urbanized part into a "Fairfax County Area" region. I think I get the gist of what you're saying about counties vs "coherent unit that shares characteristics", and at the very least I would tend to agree, but could you give me an example of a guide organized by coherent units instead of counties, and perhaps the link to the discussion/s about deprecating county-level articles. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 20:36, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

One such discussion is here, though there have been quite a few others on the talk pages of various states. Basically the consensus seems to be that we avoid using counties unless a) it's a famous county like Orange County (California), b) small states like RI or CT where counties are significant chunks of the state, or c) a region has so many cities that it really needs subdividing, and counties happen to provide the only reasonable way to do so, provided that they don't over-subdivide into an excessive number of region articles. Iowa has been suggested as a good example to follow. Texugo (talk) 17:41, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Also, for an example with two levels of subdivision, have a look at Talk:Texas#Sub-regions 2. Texugo (talk) 17:49, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Is it time to split this region?

User:Someonehere12345 is working on an article for the South Hampton Roads region. Does this region article need to be split? How is this best done? I am starting the discussion here because I don't know anything about this area. Ground Zero (talk) 02:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)