Latest comment: 10 years ago3 comments1 person in discussion
The Shanghai article is right now a mess because a lot of listings belonging to the districts are in the main article (and are not listified). I would like to help sorting this out, but I find it difficult as I do not see any defintions of the districts. So, I would like to ask: are the districts as they are now as they should be? or does anybody have any thoughts on needed changes to the districts? And can somebody give some advise on the definitions of the different districts (ideally by providing a map)? --(WT-en) ClausHansen 13:11, 13 April 2009 (EDT)
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The district classification is a mess. The French Concession hasn't existed for decades, and when it did, actually spanned both Luwan and Xuhui districts. And Nanjing Lu is a road by the way. It's going to be a nightmare to clean this up, but if someone's kind enough to do it, I would like to put forward a suggestion that we break up the entire city from scratch and re-categorise the areas according to the official delineation of administrative divisions. These are:
I agree that this seems to be a reasonable way forward. However, it is a lot of districts, maybe some of them, especially in 'other', could be merged. Any thoughts on that? and on which to merge? --(WT-en) ClausHansen 11:32, 16 April 2009 (EDT)
I don't, I think The Bund, The French Concession and Pudong should be kept, since they mean something even to people with no connection to Shanghai, and are actual destinations for tourists - I don't mind if you redefine their borders, but I really don't think they should be dropped. I'd suggest something like this
The Bund (Yan'an Road - to Waibaidu Bridge)
French Concession (Xuhai & Luwan districts) - Also a handy way of merging two quite similar districts to something with a sensible name
Old City (Yuyuan).
Pudong
North (Baoshan, Jiading, Quingpu + the parts of Songjiang and Minhang north of the river)
South (Jinshan, Fengxian, Nanhui + the parts of Songjiang and Minhang south of the river)
For the remaining parts I don't mind if we used official borders. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann)Talk 12:34, 16 April 2009 (EDT)
Well, that could work too, I guess, and would certainly reduce the number of districts. How should we define The Bund (only that street?)? and the Old City? --(WT-en) ClausHansen 15:04, 16 April 2009 (EDT)
Not sure about The Bund, but the old city is easily defined as the egg shaped (or very obvious circular) area inside Renmin Lu and Zhonghua lu
Ok, I will give it a try in accordance with the above suggestion implying the following districts: Pudong, The Bund, French Consession, Old City, Jingan District, Huangpu District (excluding Old City), Putuo District, Zhabei District, Hongkou District, Yangpu District, Changning District, North, South and Chongming County. This will be done as follows: Keep the Bund as is (but later check, if everything in there is placed correctly); keep French Concession as is (but later check, if everything in there is Xuhui&Luwai); move the contents of Xujiahui to French Concession; move the contents of Nanjinglu to Jingan District; keep Yangpu as is; establish the remaining district articles; move listings from the main article to the respective district articles --(WT-en) ClausHansen 12:06, 21 April 2009 (EDT)
Defining the districts may be an ongoing process. The article is slowly improving and we're in dire need of a map. Is the current district name "Former French Concession" a double negative? I don't believe the French have "won" that area over. :) I've worked on attempting to clean up the articles and would encourage anyone out there with map making interests to plunge forward. I hope to return to the city soon and add some photos to bring this article alive!(WT-en) Zepppep 16:52, 9 December 2009 (EST)
It's a difficult issue, I actually tried making one when we reorganised, but there are not enough free sources to make it, since private mapping is illegal in China, and subject to severe punishments. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann)talk 16:57, 9 December 2009 (EST)
I've got a map http://wikivoyage.org/upload/shared/b/bc/Shanghai_Admin_Districts.png but this shows the districts as per officially defined. Frankly, I still can't figure out how it can be of any help to a visitor by labelling everything in names long forgotten. If you tell a Shanghai cabby to get you to the "French Concession", you'll likely draw a look of bewilderment and half a dozen questions. :) (WT-en) Lai.jack 11:07, 11 December 2009 (EST)
We certainly need to look at redistricting Shanghai (in agreement with the statement above). I took a look at a starred-article, Chicago, and noticed it has 10 major district definitions and 35 sub-districts within those 10 larger ones. I would suggest something similar for Shanghai. To have the "French Concession" as a major district on the page seems a bit outdated, not just in terms of naming convention but more importantly, the increased amount of things of interest to travelers (I know the term means something to foreigners, in particular, and it should definitely be mentioned in Understand and District sections, but to go as far as to still use it as district??). Earlier, someone posted they thought Xuhui and Luwan districts aren't quite similar; I would have to politely disagree. Luwan has lots of neighborhoods which are quite important to give the reader a better understanding about; Xuhui is a little more spread out and has some major landmarks and major shopping areas. It would be OK to mention the French Concession area used to be made of parts in both districts, but using it as THE district identifier is a) a bit confusing and b) asks for too much info. to be crammed into a very large "district" with lots of interest to travelers. In summary, Chicago has 35 sub-districts and Shanghai only 14 (and of those 14, some are confusing to get a mental picture of, I think, exacerbated by the face we lack a map). Any recommendations Lai Jack?(WT-en) Zepppep 16:20, 14 December 2009 (EST)
(Quick interjection—Chicago actually has only 21 district articles). --(WT-en) PeterTalk 16:30, 14 December 2009 (EST)
I see 33 districts listed on the main Chicago page. I haven't checked to see if there are articles for each, but the point I was trying to make was that someone at one point in time thought 19 districts for Shanghai was too great; I'm merely trying to say that although Shanghai dominates Chicago's population by 3-6x, it has far fewer district definitions than Chitown. 19 may in fact not be too many but certainly the current # is too few. I'm not wanting to merely add districts to say that "Shanghai is bigger, it should have more districts" but to agree with others on the page the current set-up is too simplistic and using current district names would draw confusion from both locals and cabbies. I've been to the metropolis 4x in the last year alone and when I try to ask drivers off-the-cuff about "French Concession," I don't get any sort of response. The article is slowly improving and defining districts will be a big help. Cheers.(WT-en) Zepppep 10:20, 15 December 2009 (EST)
It is great to see the Shanghai articles moving forward again! In relation to districts, there are two questions: 1) Should we split up the two suburb districts into the respective administrative districts? I think not, these articles have almost no content and the individual administrative districts are not likely ever to make it to guide or even usable status. 2) Should we split French Concession up into the two administrative districts? Well, the article as it is now works well and is not too long, so unless a lot of further listings are expected, I see no reason to split it up. In my opinion, the question about what taxi drivers know or do not know is not so important here, the important thing is to put an adress in each listing sufficiently clear to show to a taxi driver. However, if French Concession does not mean anything to travellers and the two administrative districts are very different, that could be an argument for splitting the article. I would like to see more opinions on this, before we split this usable article up into two outline articles. In relation to the comparison with Chicago: Districting Chicago and Shanghai are done very similar as it is now with individual articles for the central districts with a lot to see and do and with districts further away from the centre being merged in a few suburb articles. (WT-en) ClausHansen 11:14, 15 December 2009 (EST)
If you guys insist, I don't mind it much if Luwan and Xuhai was broken up, but other than that I really don't see the point of breaking up Shanghai any further. Distrification should be based on content, not how many districts other cities have. Empty articles by-and-large discourage editing, while well established articles encourage users to add the one or two missing listings they think are missing. Which is why Delhi with 12 million residents currently don't have any districts, while Copenhagen with only a million have 9. As for Chicago - Chicago's districts currently contains 851 kb of text, while Shanghai's districts only have 97 kb, the total Shanghai text about the same as the Stockholm article's 150 kb, which doesn't have a single district.
And after reading though the French concession guide, it actually works really well as a way to build an article I think. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann)talk 12:03, 15 December 2009 (EST)
I'm glad someone brought up the Chicago article. Its clear partition of the city by making use of main and sub districts makes it such an enjoyable read. I believe the Shanghai article can be crafted from a similar approach. No zone should be deemed too large or too small (within reason of course) to write about. Right now, almost everything in the article revolves around a few Puxi districts and Pudong, with little else related to anything else, but that doesn't mean information on the less visited areas wouldn't become available in the future. Having limited information on certain districts shouldn't stop us from zoning out a baseline that includes them. Quick question: Would having empty articles be violating Wikivoyage's policy? If so, I stand corrected. If not, then better to create the empty sub-articles now and wait for content to be composed, than to have to break up the sections again when they grow too large in the future.
A few other observations:
1. The Bund and Old City are actually points of interest within the Huangpu district, which itself is already a comparatively small district. They should be created as sub-districts within the Huangpu district article.
2. I'm in favour of breaking up the French Concession. I've been researching a little bit on its origin and boundary definition, and from several accounts, it is not exactly a straightforward amalgamation of modern day Luwan and Xuhui like how we tell it here. Some of it actually extended deep into the Huangpu district. (WT-en) Lai.jack 10:14, 17 December 2009 (EST)
There is no rules against creating empty districts, but it's certainly not encouraged either, many cities have had empty districts for years to an end. From my point of view, it would be better to follow Chicago's approach, which exactly did wait for districts to grow before splitting them up - I think it's the best way to achieve coverage - people are more likely to add content if there is something there already.
The structure is easily build with redirects, so one approach would be to create all the missing districts as redirect pages, and making sure addresses in the listings include the district - i.e. "Shanghai Lu 47-B, Fengxian", so it's easily split up by anyone once the article becomes large enough. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann)talk 10:30, 17 December 2009 (EST)
Alright guys, how about this. We can have Puxi as a zone by itself in the main article alongside Pudong, the North zone, the South zone and maybe Chongming island county. Four or five in total. The Puxi article could then be subdivided into the 9 admin districts (or some other way), each one considered a subzone and having its own article. Corresponding maps for the Shanghai and Puxi articles shouldn't be too difficult to visualise and create right? (WT-en) Lai.jack 10:42, 17 December 2009 (EST)
I learned from the discussions on districtifying London that no cities should have three levels of articles. Therefore, I am not in favour of the above suggestion. (WT-en) ClausHansen 11:01, 17 December 2009 (EST)
Last suggestion. Scrap the Puxi level, but still group the individual districts within it in a Puxi zone, just like how it's done for Chicago. We end up with the following 2-level structure.
Agree, except that I think we should not split each of the north district and the south district until we have more content in these. (WT-en) ClausHansen 12:00, 17 December 2009 (EST)
I like Lai.Jack's suggestion above, but rather than "North districts (Pudong" I say we just have it say "Pudong district(s)." Pudong is so often referenced that it more or less stands on its own and doesn't need to have "East districts" before it. It's much like Puxi--it's one of the big ones. Especially when considering the Pudong airport, I think it makes a lot of sense to have it more or less treating like Puxi (there are smaller areas known within Pudong, such as Lujiazui). Other than that, I'm a big fan of having a good article listed out beforehand and letting the info. be put onto the proper article pages, rather than waiting until the article grows before setting up the framework. I would venture to say there are examples that support and detract support for this idea. I think other well-written articles can be used as a guide, but following the letter of the law for that article isn't mandatory, right?(WT-en) Zepppep 09:22, 18 December 2009 (EST)
I spent some time this past weekend thinking about items on the discussion page: 1) awesome job on the map, Lai.Jack! 2) I'm still relatively new to WT so will heed to others with more experience and their opinions in general--particularly admins-- however I'd like to state two things. A) I realize getting content on the article to help travelers is why we're all here, and there are ways of encouraging content to be posted. Still, however, I can't go along with the argument "let's get content now, worry about organizing it later." In the case of London, the current CotM, one of the items on the to do list is districtfying and putting content on the relevant district pages--perhaps an avoidable expenditure of time for the few individuals who had put things on the right page. This is quite a bit of work, and it only takes one or two people to post a bunch of content which then takes someone else to come along and put it in the right place (I am aware of WT's policy about not creating district pages as the need arises). I think it's better to build the foundation, then worry about the decorations. B) It's important to mention some historical references whenever possible to give the article some life and context, but names and places change. Few cities in the last two decades have seen as much change (in many ways) than the metropolises of China. Some of the historical references to areas, while meaningful to "outsiders" perhaps or locals alike, change and while it's maybe helpful and/or interesting to list some of these changes, what's true for today may be something entirely different (this is largely based upon the districtification of Shanghai and yeah/nay on the French Concession name). 3) It's been fun discussing how the article page should go. The city has withstood some tremendous changes--on shear volume alone--and each time I look at the page, I think it's showing more and more improvements (for such an important place, the article was looking rather dull and disorganized until recently).(WT-en) Zepppep 18:33, 20 December 2009 (EST)
I tend to think that both good content and good structure (which makes it easier to figure out where to add that content), encourage good contributions. Perhaps we could think here about a possible "final" districts scheme and what it would look like, but for the time being, keep larger districts in use that could in the future be broken into parts. That's precisely what we did with Chicago, which is generally a good article to look at for guidance.
I'd like to use the map here: Wikipedia as the base. It seems to me that gives a much better overview of outlying districts than our current scheme. It might need airports added, maybe lines 1 & 2, and Pudong split up a bit. Nanhui & downtown Pudong are quite different, for example.
The "Southern suburbs" "Western suburbs" stuff we now have strikes me as just adding an irrelevant (not generally used in Shanghai; people say Minhang or whatever) useless (to travellers) and broken (it forces us to split Songjiang & Minhang to fit our procrustean categories) layer. The sooner we can eliminate those, the better.
I think our "Inner Districts of Puxi" section is fine, as is the district split under it, though I'd call it "Central Puxi", or even "Central Shanghai". "Pudong and outer districts", though, is an error; those need to be two separate categories. (WT-en) Pashley 20:45, 28 July 2010 (EDT)
We do not have enough content to justify individual articles for each of the suburban districts. Therefore, I suggest that at least for now we leave the structure as it is. This is in accordance with the structure in many other large cities like Chicago and London, --(WT-en) ClausHansen 03:59, 30 July 2010 (EDT)
Another good WP map is at wikipedia:List_of_administrative_divisions_of_Shanghai#Subdivisions. As I see it, those are much better than our current maps because they show the actual districts, the ones that are used in printed addresses and in conversation in Shanghai. Ask someone in Shanghai where they live and they are very likely to use one of those districts, though they might say "French Concession" instead. They may name a nearby landmark, metro stop or major street, but they are likely to add the district as well.
Things we have added like the bogus groupings "Pudong and outer districts", "Southern Suburbs" and "Western Suburbs" add nothing, nor does the silly split of Minhang into two pseudo-districts. I see no reason to even consider keeping them.
At some point, we will probably need to split Pudong up, separating downtown Pudong, which is full of skyscrapers, from the less developed Southern part Nanhui, some of which is downright rural, and maybe splitting out some other districts. For now, though, a single Pudong district is fine. Other than that, we should just use the usual Shanghai district boundaries. Pashley (talk) 23:49, 10 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
Reading back through this, Lai Jack's original suggestion (second contribution in the section) looks very good to me. It uses the administrative districts as I argued just above that we should, and it has Nanhui as a separate area.
Apart from the administrative districts, I'd say French Concession, Old City and Nanhui are the only things to add.
Latest comment: 9 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Would anyone be able to resize the pic posted a while ago of the Metro map(WT-en) Zepppep 15:28, 21 December 2009 (EST)? It's huge! (I plead ignorance on this...)
It's huge indeed. And outdated too. Line 7 is missing. (WT-en) Jack Lai 05:06, 22 December 2009 (EST)
Line 7 was added nearly one year ago, but it no longer reflects the current line. I left details on the image discussion page. (WT-en) Zepppep 04:26, 31 December 2010 (EST)
It is quite badly out of date. Lines 7 and 10, both heavily used & going to tourist sites, are missing. 11 & 13 are not shown either. Also, since this map was made both ends of line 2 have been extended, out to the two airports, and the south end of line 8 extended a long way as well. There may be more changes I don't know about.
I'd say this is unmaintainable, given how fast things change in Shanghai. It may be a copyright violation as well.
Perhaps we should get rid of the map entirely, just link to the official site.[1] That has additional info as well, like first & last train for each route and links to single-line maps. Pashley (talk) 23:53, 30 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm back in Shanghai for the first time since 2012 and maps in the metro stations show several lines that I don't remember from before: 11, 13, 16, 20. The map we link to has most of them but I think some of our text needs updating, especially in some of the suburban district articles like Nanhui where some of them go. Pashley (talk) 09:40, 15 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I removed two chunks of text from the Hongqiao airport section: "If Pudong airport is an option for a flight it is vastly preferable to Hongqiao as it is difficult to determine if a departing flight is from Terminal 1 or Terminal 2; a mistake involves a 20-minute ride between the terminals. At the time of this writing neither the Hongqio airport's English website nor Shanghai airlines website stated which flights depart from which terminal." and later " If you miss your flight at terminal one and need a flight out of Pudong, you will have to take a shuttle back to Terminal Two, then navigate that labyrinthine terminal to find the shuttle to Pudong, costing you another ¥40."
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
What are poster prices like there? I ask because they vary quite widely in my experience.
As a Canadian in China, I wanted a poster of Norman Bethune, a Canadian doctor quite well-known there. The most common one has him on horseback, galloping through the countryside with medical bag in hand and a couple of Red Army soldiers behind. I found one at the French Concession tourist memorablia shop "Madame Mao's Dowry" for 2000 rmb (with Bethune described as French, yet!) and bought one in the outdoor antique market for 40 rmb. Mine is somewhat smaller and it seems possible Madame M's was real and mine a reprint, but that is still a whopping difference.
Latest comment: 9 years ago5 comments1 person in discussion
I would like to see our coverage here get up to Guide status, and perhaps later even Star. With that, Shanghai would be a natural for Destination of the Month, since it is large, important and heavily touristed. Currently, though, it falls short of Guide criteria:
Probably the hardest is (from Wikivoyage:City_guide_status): For huge city articles, all district articles are at least "usable" status. The following districts are currently below that:
Listed as "inner districts", all on Puxi side of the river:
Most of those just need expansion (mainly more listings) to get up to Usable status. However, I feel quite strongly that we need changes to the district organisation as well. See #Shanghai_districts above for older discussion. I have fairly strong opinions on what needs to be done, and will start on the simple changes soon.
Create articles, mostly only redirects, for official districts that currently have none.
French concession mentions (Luwan, Xuhui)
Western suburbs lists (Baoshan, Jiading, Qingpu, Northern Songjiang, Western Minhang)
In the process, get rid of the arbitrary splits Northern/Southern Songjiang and Eatern/Western Minhang
Add an article for the unofficial district Nanhui; the term is in common use in Shanghai and the area is quite distinct from the more developed central area of Pudong
For the larger or potentially controversial changes, I'll wait a few days to see anyone objects here:
Merge Shanghai/Bund and Shanghai/Nanjing_Road into Shanghai/Huangpu. These are attractions/streets in that district; redirects are fine but they should not have independent articles. Both the proposed mergees currently list hotels etc. that are some distance from the streets.
Trash the current organisation of the district list in the main article, breaking it into "Inner districts of Puxi" and "Pudong and outer districts" where the latter then includes "Western suburbs" and "Southern suburbs". All but the first of the quoted phrases are entirely artifical.
Replace it with:
"Inner districts", which splits into "Downtown Puxi" and "Pudong"
"Outlying districts", which links to various suburban district articles
Trash the "Western suburbs" and "Southern suburbs" articles
I made the changes above, drastically re-arranging the Districts section and creating several new district articles. Then I made a copy-editing pass through the whole article, fixing grammar and re-organizing to eliminate some severe redundancy. For example, the Cope section included "Tips on shopping" which I moved to Buy and had its own Talk sub-heading.
Shanghai has two airports. Are you also going to do an article for the older Hongqiao Airport? It handles nearly all domestic flights plus some to nearby countries like Japan & Korea. Pashley (talk) 15:34, 13 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
The reason to create an airport article is usually if the airport merits its own destination guide, and I think Pudong airport does. Hongqiao is an important airport, although (I feel) people are unlikely to spend too much time there. Tokyo Haneda and Seoul Gimpo airports are very similar to Hongqiao in that they are secondary airports that mostly serve domestic routes with a handful of international flights, and they also do not have their own pages yet. If someone would like to create a page for Hongqiao then that is fine however. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:34, 13 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago8 comments4 people in discussion
I just finished a pretty fancy districts map! It's far from perfect, because not all the data is out there yet (at least not in a free enough form to meet the CC-by-SA requirements). That means that I've pretty much had to leave the "parks" layer off, the street grid is patchy, especially outside of downtown, and the non-downtown district borders were drawn freehand, and are therefore not very precise. I think it's a good step up from the weird huge thing we have right now, though ;) The colors are meant to show each individual district distinctly, but keep the same color scheme for the groupings as in the article now, in a fashion similar to Washington, D.C.#Districts or Chicago#Districts. --PeterTalk15:36, 23 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Nice! Thanks. I have inserted it.
Possible improvements would be showing Shanghai#Water_towns, or at least the two that are out on the borders so easier to show, and indicating the Downtown Pudong vs Nanhui split as shown here. Shanghai/Pudong#Districts Neither is urgent; as is, it is quite usable and far better than any of the several earlier maps. Pashley (talk) 15:52, 23 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
I've now updated the map with the suggestions above. Since we're using a separate article for Nanhui, I would recommend linking it from the districts section. --PeterTalk20:53, 28 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ah, I see it there now. I think each instance where a region was linked but not in one of the bulleted lists was something that I missed. Others might miss them too. Maybe just bolding the instances of individual articles would take care of this problem. I suppose I should change the color of Nanhui to the blue scheme too, right? --PeterTalk04:46, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
I've never done the whole route by bus (thank heaven!) but have done large chunks of it. Fuzhou-Shanghai and Xiamen-Shenzhen are both typically done on overnight sleeper buses (not comfortable if you're tall!) in around 8 or 10 hours. Xiamen-Fuzhou is about four. Pashley (talk) 23:45, 28 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I do not think Shanghai/Bund and Shanghai/Nanjing Road should have district articles. They are not districts, just roads. Also, there are problems in the current articles like the Bund listing a hotel on Xizang Road and Nanjing Road listing the Hyatt, which is in Pudong.
As I see it, the Bund should certainly be merged into Shanghai/Huangpu and redirected there. I'd say Nanjing Road should be merged partly to Huangpu and partly to Shanghai/Jing'an then made into a disambig page. I would not merge Shanghai/Old City (also in Huangpu district) but a case can be made for doing that as well.
I have done the merging, but now Shanghai/Huangpu and Shanghai/Jing'an both need considerable work. Listings are inconsistently formatted, not all are complete, there is some duplication, none of the lists are alphabetised, no doubt I have put some things in the wrong place, and so on. Volunteers? Pashley (talk) 20:44, 2 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
I changed the foreign population numbers in the lead section. Unlike WP, not everything here needs a cited source; indeed external links are discouraged. However, it seems to me the source of my numbers is worth noting here. Pashley (talk) 22:43, 9 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
I would like to see our coverage here get up to Guide status, and perhaps later even Star. With that, Shanghai would be a natural for Destination of the Month, since it is large, important and heavily touristed. Currently, though, it falls short of Guide criteria.
Probably the hardest is (from Wikivoyage:City_guide_status): For huge city articles, all district articles are at least "usable" status.
Zhabei outline, quite weak for a large & central district
Except for Pudong, the suburbs are all rated as outlines. Some are nearly empty while others have quite a bit of content.
Would anyone care to pitch in here? Most of these articles need help. Even if you don't know Shanghai, you could check whether current status ratings look correct. Pashley (talk) 04:19, 14 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
I like making these tables to keep track of things, and did a quick little audit of the article statuses. Weak Eat sections seem to be a recurring problem, stopping articles from reaching usable status, which for district articles requires 1-2 listings in Eat & Sleep, the main attractions covered, and a usable Get in section. It would be nice to try and get one district up to guide status (which of course means a fair amount of work I can't really do myself), if only to add some green to this table ;)
I still find the Districts + Other areas sections very confusing and overwhelming. Actually, despite being the person who drew the districts map, I didn't realize there was a Shanghai/Old City article until just now! This risks readers not just missing important information, but entire articles. I think I can help with this, and will try some reorganization when I'm less tired. Awesome work, though, Pashley. --PeterTalk04:53, 14 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
I've given the Old City more prominence in the list.
What is now "other areas" was once a subheading under "districts". I gave it is own higher-level heading to keep the districts section from being too overwhelming. Should that be reversed? Should we use another name such as "Landmarks"? Pashley (talk) 14:17, 14 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
I actually think we should get rid of that section, since it really muddles districts navigation, and move the content mostly to "See" (and to other sections as appropriate). --PeterTalk19:31, 14 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
I notice that the Baltimore table includes a column for which articles have maps. Shanghai itself has no maps except the districts one and a 1907 historical map; both are good for what they do but neither is useful as a general-purpose map. I do not think any of the districts have maps yet. Would anyone care to take that on?
That could be nice (similar to what's at Washington, D.C.#See). Could you give me a numbered, alphabetical list of the names of the attractions you want on the map, like this:
It has just been promoted to Guide, but it does not actually meet all the criteria — not all districts are at Usable — so perhaps that should be reverted. Alternately, revise the table above for a current check on district status, then do some remedial work on districts. Pashley (talk) 10:11, 20 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, I was unaware of the criterion of all district guides being usable. When taken as standalone the Shanghai guide is definitely at guide level and perhaps could even shoot for star status. The problem with Shanghai is that as a city there are a lot of districts without a great deal to say about them. Perhaps we need to redouble our efforts in places such as Shanghai/Chongming where many foreigners (myself included) have never visited. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 10:17, 20 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 6 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
Web search for "Shanghai tourist map" turns up a dozen of them. Here's a decent one that covers roughly the right area, albeit with more detail than we might need & missing metro info.
We want all the metro stations in the area, and the lines shown in the usual colour code (see Shanghai#By_metro, 4th para). Certainly lines 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, probably 3 & 4, maybe others.
Bodies of water
Huangpu River
Suzhou Creek, a tributary which is the northern border of Huangpu District
Districts:
old city (roughly circular, in the middle of Hangpu)
Huangpu, mostly between the old town & Suzhou Creek
Zhabei, North of the creek
Jing'an, West of Huangpu
French Concession, SW of Huangpu, inland of old town
Pudong (specifically Lujiazui) across the river, inside a river bend that points at Huangpu. Enough of it to show the Century Avenue station, which I cannot find on map linked above. See Shanghai/Pudong#Get_in for reason.
maybe Putuo, W of Zhabei
Major streets. Lu is Chinese for road. Many have one of bei, nan, dong, xi or zhong (N, S, E, W, & middle, respectively) in the name, I think we should ignore that here, but a 2nd opinion is needed.
Remin Lu & Zhonghua Lu, where the old city walls were
The Bund, along the water, West side
going South, the Bund becomes Zhongshan Road. That goes S, W, N and E to become a ring road, looping around most of downtown.
ferry near S end of Bund
Nanjing Road, running off the Bund & West
roads parallel to NJ Road: Fuzhou Road, a couple of blocks South, and Beijing Road, 1st major street North
Yan'an Elevated Road, the main E-W freeway downtown
Xi Zang (Tibet) road, runs N-S on E side of People's Park
Chengdu Lu, N-S, becomes Chongqing Lu
Shaanxi Lu, N-S, further W
Huahai Road, shown partly in purple on map linked above, roughly parallel to NJ Road, well S of it, continues out past the library (a line 10 stop) and Soong Qing Ling's house (an attraction)
Fuxing and Changle Roads, N and S of it & parallel
Hengshan Road, Goes S off Huahai near Changshu Road station (line 1 & 7)
Xujiahui, mega-intersection where Hengshan rd ends
Then there are temples, other attractions like the Pearl Tower in Pudong (I find it remarkably ugly, but it is an attraction), hotels (Peace Hotel at Bund & NJ Road is a landmark), and other stuff. Pashley (talk) 23:56, 17 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
My guess is such a map should concentrate on the overall layout & features useful in navigation: rivers, subway routes, major streets, district boundaries since district names are usually given in addresses. Hotels, restaurants and attractions can mostly be left for the district maps. Exceptions are ones that are landmarks — Jing'an Temple, Yuyuan Gardens, conspicuous things like Bund Centre, Park Hotel and Pearl Tower. Pashley (talk) 13:56, 21 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
We now have a Downtown Shanghai article & it has been nominated for Dotm, but since most of the listings are in districts the auto-map for that article is awful, only a half dozen items shown. Something along the lines discussed would improve it greatly. Any volunteers? Pashley (talk) 14:14, 4 January 2018 (UTC)Reply
I am having difficulties with understanding this topic, since my English is not native.
You are talking about two maps: A tourist map we can create and display in JPG format or equivalent, similar to the one in your link to chinatouristmaps. And another one is the automatically generated auto-map. Did I understand it well? Szalai.laci (talk) 05:07, 12 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
I am not really sure what I'm talking about since I'm pretty much a text-only guy & know almost nothing about map making, but your summary sounds about right. Pashley (talk) 05:11, 12 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
You say the auto-map is awful, but I think it's fine. I looked at recent DOTMs, Santiago de Chile, Baltimore, Milan: They all have nearly nothing on the map, since their actual listings are in the district pages. The only difference is, we are already on the Downtown page and still not showing the attractions, that's in the next level: So the difference is the 3-level structrue. We're huge... Those cities that have one big page for the whole city, have it all on one map - but these are small cities. I guess i can figure out making changes in text which generate changes on auto-map, but i'm also not the guy to draw (.jpg) maps. When the auto-map shows a picture on click, like it does at Hongqiao Railway St, that looks very attractive and I believe that's dependent on the attraction's wikidata entry, what's the value of the "image" parameter. Szalai.laci (talk) 06:01, 12 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
The municipal government runs a site Shanghai Cultural Information which has good listings of current stuff, everything from acrobatic shows at the circus to special exhibits at museums and public galleries, plus musicians on tour, plays, etc. I therefore want to list it; it is a useful resource and covers things that change too fast for us to cover, and it is run by the local gov't so it is close to our "primary source" criterion.
On the other hand, it is also a booking engine and policy says don't list those. I'm therefore asking here rather than just putting it in, What do others think?
We've always struggled with how to include good event guides while excluding the vast majority of questionable "guides", and Wikivoyage talk:External links has a number of discussions on the subject. There was a past discussion about marking some links as "approved exceptions to policy" after consensus was reached to include them, but unfortunately that never materialized.
IMHO, when a link is very clearly useful, is not leading to additional questionable links being added, and an argument has been made for its inclusion, I'm more than happy to leave it be despite existing policy (see Talk:Davis (California) for a similar example - the link in question has been in the article for several years now). In this case, if someone raises an issue then the link would need to be removed in accordance with policy, but provided it doesn't lead to a lot of additional spammy links I wouldn't personally feel any need to remove it. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:40, 21 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
Why don't you be bold and change the policy page so that some links can be "approved exceptions to policy" if consensus is reached on the article discussion page to include them, Ryan/Pashley? -- Alice✉ 16:42, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
My understanding was that the "approved exceptions" bit was already something we agreed upon, and have been acting accordingly in my writing and advice to others! Could we discreetly slap up a consensus tag in the discussion, instead of, erm, marketing the possibility to marketers previously deterred by our policy? --PeterTalk07:28, 23 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
I don't think we need any more "secret policies"; better to document accepted and consensual practices - although I do sympathise with wishing to avoid linkspam. -- Alice✉ 21:13, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
Latest comment: 8 years ago10 comments4 people in discussion
I'm just wondering if the article for the 'French Concession' should be called that? I understand that many foreigners in Shanghai refer to the area like that, however I think some Chinese would not be happy to hear it called as such? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 14:24, 5 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
I did think about this while doing the recent re-districting (see #District_changes.3F above), and I concluded that we need to keep the name. Policy is to use the commonest English name and "French Concession" is certainly that, at least among foreigners in Shanghai.
We could do separate articles for Shanghai/Xuhui and Shanghai/Luwan, both now redirects to French Concession. Currently Xuhui is the only official district without an article. (Some districts have two since we split Pudong/Nanhui and Huangpu/Old Town.) But Xuhui and Luwan have much in common; both articles would need to mention they were part of the old Concession. Some of the major streets run through both. Also, Luwan District no longer officially exists; for administrative purposes it has been merged into Huangpu.
Just having an article for Xuhui and moving the Luwan stuff into the Huangpu article does not really work. The Luwan area (West of the Old Town & formerly French) is distinct from what we now cover in Shanghai/Huangpu (North of the Old Town & formerly British) in many ways. It needs either its own article or inclusion in a French Concession article.
The current situation is very unclear, because French Concession is not on the map, and the administrative districts are listed next to the map. I think the Districtions section should look more like Chicago#Districts or New Orleans#Districts, and the map should show Wikivoyage districts instead of administrative ones for clarity. Globe-trotter (talk) 16:06, 7 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
It's at least a little less confusing right now, because I didn't even realize there was a French Concession district when I was trying to make the map! --PeterTalk09:05, 9 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
The map shows the official district Xuhui, but the text beside it has:
Xuhui (徐汇区; Xúhuìqū) The central district of the French Concession, with a fine cathedral and other religious buildings, now a major shopping area with many up-market highrise buildings, both residential and office.
The French Concession article explains the districts (third paragraph of lead section) and has a map showing the old concession. I thought that was clear enough. Do others disagree? Pashley (talk) 13:46, 9 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
I think having the article name to the side makes it pretty easy to miss. I'm kind of a good test case, since I come from a starting point of knowing nothing about the city. I am only realizing right now that Xuhui and the French Concession are the same thing. I think I should change the map to show French Concession instead of Xuhui, unless we want to rename the article to Xuhui. There's enough space on the map, anyway, to put Xuhui under the name in parentheses. And I'd also like to show the Old City. --PeterTalk05:56, 10 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Xuhui & the French Concession are not the same thing, so renaming the article Xuhui does not work. Compare the maps at Shanghai#Districts & Shanghai/French Concession. The area now referred to as "the French concession" includes Luwan. Historically, there was "French Bund" too, but that can be ignored I think.
That's kind of a bigger problem, though. Where do we write about content that is in Xuhui, but not in the French Concession? --PeterTalk17:39, 10 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago14 comments4 people in discussion
There has been the addition of content for universities to the article that I do not believe is relevant for the visitor to Shanghai.
How should universities be listed? I feel each university should only be included in the 'Learn' section if it offers a relevant course for the visitor (such as Mandarin). I do not believe listing universities for students (international or domestic) is relevant to WikiVoyage.
I think the version I wrote & that you have just reverted to is fine, though it could likely be expanded. There are unis in Shanghai we do not mention yet, though I think we have all the big ones.
The version you reverted from was OK too, though I'd debate the details. It had Fudan as China's #3 uni after two in Beijing, Beida & Tsinghua. I'd sooner say Beida & Fudan are the top two general unis, Tsinghau & Jiaoda the top two engineering schools. (I may be biased; I worked at Jiaoda.) Someone else might want to add that Tongji (Shanghai/Yangpu#See) is also a top school, or claim my "top two" lists should be top three with maybe Zhongshan U in Guangzhou and CUST in Hefei added. The exact choice of details does not matter a lot, though mentioning that certain schools are prestigious seems worthwhile. (Chinese were certainly impressed by a Jiaoda business card, for example.)
It is not just Mandarin courses that are relevant. Some travellers are looking for jobs Teaching English, or looking for info on a uni area where they have a job offer. Others want the uni area for cheap restaurants & bars, or a chance to meet English-speaking students.
Also, there are courses taught in English; there's an MBA emphasizing foreign trade at a uni in Pudong and Jiaoda has a summer course for European Masters degree students that leads to internships in China. As I see it, international students, such as the large numbers of Africans at Chinese unis, are travellers so providing a bit of background for them is OK. Not a high priority, but worth doing where we can. Pashley (talk) 13:25, 13 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
I agree that Shanghai is becoming a very important international student destination, however I still query whether this information belongs in WikiVoyage. Wikipedia itself has a whole article devoted to this very subject! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_and_colleges_in_Shanghai and I would say that should be the place to look up such information. That isn't to say Universities should not be listed.. for example in the city of Busan in Korea the PNU is listed mainly because of the vibrant nightlife and shopping around it, thereby becoming a relevant travel destination. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 13:41, 13 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
I am really asking if we can make all content for Wikivoyage relevant for travellers, and more encyclopedic information into Wikipedia itself --Andrewssi2 (talk) 13:41, 13 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
I will admit that I don't really know :) If we link then we break policy, however if we don't link then we replicate content... The more I think about this it seems to affect many new general articles in Wikivoyage (such as 'airlines' and 'train travel') which are also already addressed (better) in Wikipedia. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 14:09, 13 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps the answer in the meantime is to ensure we write about educational institutions in a way that describes them as potential travel destinations, rather than 'University X is regarded better then University Y'. I admit I have little knowledge of Shanghai universities (I only ever visit on business) however I am sure there is something interesting to write about each university and the surrounding area. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 14:09, 13 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
I think that we will need to debate this issue as a matter of policy because there seems to be inconsistency between different city articles. The Tokyo and Beijing articles do go into a lot of detail regarding university listing. I think what we really need to determine is whether international students are considered to be travellers (according to most countries' immigration laws, they are), or should we restrict the definition to travellers to just tourists and business visitors on short trips. The dog2 (talk) 04:04, 22 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
I only just got around to reading the discussion, and although it is an interesting read it doesn't actually provide a conclusion in what is the scope of an article. I think the question is similar (i.e. are people getting married in China considered travellers?) and I agree that scope should be restricted to travel related topics, not about anything that could happen to people who go to foreign countries.
I could say that listing all the electronics factories in the Shanghai region is relevant to me and my travelling, and I'm sure everyone would disagree :) --Andrewssi2 (talk) 07:00, 9 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
On the other hand, a tour of an electronics factory might be interesting, so it could be reasonable to list factories that give tours under "See" for the relevant place. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:02, 9 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
A tour of an electronics factory would be relevant to a tourist (similar to a ship building tour in Geoji in Korea). My opinion is that universities should be listed if they meet a similar criteria for general travelers rather than students specifically going to university in a foreign country. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 13:58, 9 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
One thing not clear to me from the article (and actually google as well) is when is it actually a good idea to use the Maglev train? (from a time and/or cost perspective)
For example, if I am staying in a central area like Xintiandi, is it better to take a taxi all the way to Pudong airport, or is it worth to take a taxi to the Maglev station and then take the train? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 06:48, 9 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
Some hotels provide a free shuttle bus. Apart from that, the cheapest way will be metro, 6 or 8 rmb and reasonably quick, but it won't work well at rush hour or with a lot of luggage. From Xintiandi, a bit of a walk to the station and two train changes; line 1 or 10, change to 2, then there's a change between parts of line 2 (easy, trains on opposite sides of same platform). Metro then maglev bumps the cost to 50 or so & is faster, same number of changes.
Taxi might be 150; in many cases it would be worth paying for the convenience. Taxi then maglev strikes me as odd, fairly high cost but you still have to haul your luggage onto a train. Faster transit time, but add time to pick up ticket and wait for next train and it may not be much faster overall. Pashley (talk) 11:25, 9 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
Makes sense. I would put the midrange/splurge boundary at 800 rather than 1000, but it is almost a year since I've been there and I don't travel splurge class so I'll defer to your judgment on that. Pashley (talk) 11:51, 20 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I think Shanghai (and Beijing actually) is somewhat special for hotels since the difference between the most cheap and most expensive accommodation is really big compared to other cities. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 12:11, 20 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
OK, done. I wanted to archive "Shanghai districts" discussion since it is very long and started in 2009. However last comment was in May 2013 so I felt that I should leave it. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 10:53, 20 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I have seen several recent news stories about fairly awful air pollution in & around Shanghai, e.g. [3][4].
Do we need a warning here? Or for some larger region? A link to reliable current info? I'd say reliable implies not Chinese gov't. see for example [5]. Pashley (talk) 14:16, 11 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
The smog has been pretty bad here, and if you were visiting then you basically would not leave the hotel over the last weekend. However consensus from Shanhaiesee is that this was pretty exceptional and that they hope this is not the new normal. A warning may be premature at this stage because we don't know if it is going to happen again.
That said, there probably should be a more prominent warning on the China article itself. This is because in Shnaghai the government is able to take some limited action, whereas 'tier 2' cities such as Harbin basically have to put up with it.
Also it seems the Chinese government is being more open about the problem this time around. The bigger problem is that the American embassey only publishes their (considered more accurate) pollution readings on twitter, which is not of great use to most people in China because it is blocked. http://aqicn.org/city/shanghai/ however is accessible and seems to have accurate readings. Andrewssi2 (talk) 00:25, 12 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago7 comments7 people in discussion
Banner currently used in this articleSuggested new alternative banner
I created a new alternative banner for this article (I initially created it first and foremost so that it would be used at the top of the parallel article in the Hebrew edition of Wikivoyage, yet I later decided to also suggest that the English Wikivoyage community would consider using it here as well). So, which banner do you prefer having at the top of this article? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 12:45, 11 August 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I just noticed that the Jing'an map looked rather strange. On investigation it is because Wikipedia reported an official merge of Zhabei and Jing'an on November 2015. See w:Jing'an_District.
Now, the Wikivoyage districts don't have to follow the official districts, but over time our guide will become out of synch. Should we consider merging too? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 07:44, 27 January 2016 (UTC)Reply
Sounds sensible to me. I did the last round of district changes & while I think the current list is much better than what we had before (see Talk:Shanghai/Districts.old), I'm open to further change if there's a good argument for it. This one is almost a no-brainer. Pashley (talk) 11:19, 27 January 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 6 years ago44 comments6 people in discussion
I have just been to Shanghai and this collection of articles were of little help given how intricate and unnecessarily complex the structure of it is. We have drill-downs up to three levels down from what is supposedly a city article, and we have more than 7+/-2 districts within this level. Moreover, quite a few districts require long-winded explanations about how they are not what they are supposed to be and do not correspond to the map...
I would move to:
Treat the administrative entity of Shanghai as a region, rather than a city, as this is what it really is by general standards
Make Puxi + Lujiazui into a city article called e.g. Shanghai City
Reorganize districts in both into logical, easy-to-navigate entities (comments on those in due course as we reorganize)
I completely agree that it is a mess, but then again Shanghai in reality is a big crazy mess :) Pinging User:Pashley since he has worked a great deal on this as well.
I lived there for over a year, and didn't try to make too many structural changes since the districts, although disorganized, did seem to make sense.
The Shanghai inner districts do make a city all by themselves, so I'm OK to change the outer districts to a region.
I tried to, and the article did not make any sense to me before I went to the city. After a week in, I now can only say that the way we sliced and diced Shanghai makes it difficult to digest.
Of course "locals" like you will feel it's oversimplifying, but to me the centre is pretty much three districts:
People's Square + Nanjing + Bund (+ maybe the Old Town, forgot about it when initially writing as I found it so disappointing...)
Lujiazui
French Concession
Everything else is a tad "whatever", as there are only scattered individual attractions that would make you go further than those. So perhaps "Outer Puxi" and "Outer Pudong" would do. PrinceGloria (talk) 10:11, 28 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
Shanghai districts are tough. I created most of the structure we now have, mostly following the official administrative structure. What we had before that is archived at Talk:Shanghai/Districts.old & the discussion is either on this page or in its archive.
Basically no disagreements at all (including comment on Old Town, although pretty much every tourist has to visit). People's Square + Nanjing Road East + Bund + Old Town all make good sense to group together. Pudong is not well served by its current standalone article, so a split between Lujiazui and 'Outer Pudong' sounds good.
Where would 'Jing'an' fit in? As discussed above it has now grown administratively to cover Zhabei as well. I think it should merge and remain separate, not bundled with French Concession. Andrewssi2 (talk) 11:41, 28 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
If we turn the inner districts on the map above, plus Liuzhazui (are there other areas of central Pudong that should be included?) into a "Shanghai City" or "Central Shanghai" article, Jing'an is included. Pashley (talk) 12:43, 28 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
I found only Lujiazui to feel like a part of the city centre. With regard to Jing'an, the riverine border makes it quite apparently separate from Zhabei to a traveller, I see no benefit in reflecting the administrative change. That said, I see benefit in merging Zhabei, Jing'an, Putuo and Changning - that would give the resulting article a critical mass of POIs, which could then be grouped under subheadings pertaining to the few clusters existing within those districts. PrinceGloria (talk) 13:31, 28 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
Probably only the Lujiazui part of Pudong should go into "Central Shanghai".
I do not like the idea of a "North" district within a "Central Shanghai" article, if that is what you are suggesting; it seems contrary to the idea of creating a simple article for the really central areas.
I'd be in favour of "Central Shanghai" and "North Central Shanghai" articles, but I'd want to keep most or all the existing district articles, linked from those and/or from Shanghai Municipality turned into a region article. Pashley (talk) 05:29, 29 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
As a first-time visitor to Shanghai who had tried to use this guide, I am precisely against it. Shanghai is a huge and intricate city with... very little to see, admittedly (comparatively for a city of that size of course). Most attractions are to be found in the three core areas identified above, and the outer districts hold precious little, plus the distinction between each of them is discernible and important only to locals who care about administrative divisions. We need to group together the districts to explain how visiting Shanghai works, not how the city was spliced by the authorities. PrinceGloria (talk) 05:43, 29 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
I think it would be much easier to cover downtown without including Liujiazui, though I included it in my test edits. Moving Liujiazui here also leaves us with a problem; there is a lot of Pudong that is neither Liujiazui nor Nanhui; what do we do with that? Pashley (talk) 07:17, 29 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
Very nice, and much clearer. Since there is a further Central Shanghai within the area you called Central Shanghai, how about "Shanghai City" as the name? With regard to Pudong, it should remain with its own article covering everything but Liujiazui IMHO. PrinceGloria (talk) 07:26, 29 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
I dislike the idea of calling an article "Shanghai City" since I think that would be confusing in relation to "Shanghai Municipality".
The current Pudong article could mostly move to "Liujiazui", though it would then need editing. I'd keep Nanhui since that is a commonly used term and a distinct area, even though that article is pretty skeletal. I'd then make Pudong a redirect to a section of Shanghai Municipality.
My take on the latter would be to merge the rest of Pudong with Nanhui, as regardless of the common use of the term, the attractions in both are sparse save for Luijazui, so maintaining two separate articles is unnecessary. We can call it Pudong and Nanhui.
User:Andrewssi2, User:Pashley, can we take it further not to lose momentum? I was wondering whom else to invite to participate in this discussion, but it seems that outside of you two no other users have been making substantial contributions to this article in recent months... So it seems like we need to reach consensus between us 3. PrinceGloria (talk) 06:41, 6 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
Sorry! I was mindful of this discussion, but I've been flat out at work last couple weeks (as my editing history will attest to).
The relation between Central Shanghai and Shanghai Municipality is much more like that of NYC to Metro New York than NYC to the state. We don't need a Metro Shanghai article, since the region already has an official name, Shanghai Municipality. A redirect Metro->Municipality could be added, but I think that's pointless.
I think Nanhui must remain separate. "Nanhui & Pudong" is confusing because Nanhui is part of the official Pudong New Area. Just having one article for all of that area & calling it Pudong might work, but not well since the districts within it are large, populous and quite distinct. Nanhui's a million people & over half the land area in Pudong New Area.
I do not think "Shanghai City" works since it is both confusing in relation to S Municipality and hard to define with no clear boundary. To me, Central Shanghai is a much better name. I would not object much to a redirect City->Central, though I would consider it pointless, but I do object to S City as an actual article title. Pashley (talk) 10:50, 6 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
A Pudong New Area article seems pointless to me; it is a huge administrative region that is mostly of little interest to travellers. Mention it in the Municipality article, maybe add a redirect from Pudong New Area to a section there, & we're done.
I'd make Central Shanghai identical to the "Inner Districts" on the map above, with a prominent link to Liujiazui across the river. Pashley (talk) 00:47, 9 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
I am not really a big fan of "prominent links". Either Lujiazui is a city district or it's not - and to me, it very much is, one of the most important districts of central Shanghai in the present day. Pudong does not really have "districts" worth separate guides besides it, so if we left it out of the "city guide" scope, it would be something of an orphan. PrinceGloria (talk) 02:34, 10 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
Move the existing Shanghai article to Shanghai Municipality, leaving a redirect which can later be changed into a disambig.
Make the Municipality article a region.
Create Central Puxi covering the areas in the "Inner Districts" on the map above.
Move a bunch of text from the Municipality article into Central Puxi.
Move the existing Pudong article to Central Pudong. Change the Lujiazui redirect to point there.
Make Pudong a disambig between Central Pudong & Nanhui.
Make Shanghai a disambig which links to Central Puxi & Central Pudong for downtown & the Municipality article for everything else.
Keep existing region articles. Adjust breadcrumbs to point either to Municipality or to Central Puxi.
Shanghai is complicated enough that there is likely no ideal solution; the above is the best I can do. I think the first two points are definitely required improvements, the rest open to discussion.
That is a first cut that could be done fairly straightforwardly. After it is done, we can discuss whether some or all of Changning, Putuo, Zhabei, Hongkou & Yangpu are non-central enough they should be moved out of the Central Puxi article and just linked from the municipality like Minhang & other suburbs. I'm inclined to say no, but it would be worth discussing. Pashley (talk) 13:47, 7 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
See User:Pashley/Shanghai_Municipality for what I would do with the first few sections (intro, Districts, Understand) of the top-level article. Most of the rest of the current Shanghai article (Get in, ..., Go next) should be added there or moved into the Downtown Puxi article.
I think the result could just be left at Shanghai and the current redirect from S Municipality left in place. Alternately we could make the result the Municipality article & make Shanghai either a redirect there or a disambig page with links to the Municipality, Downtown Puxi and Downtown Pudong. Pashley (talk) 18:05, 8 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Meanwhile I have plunged forward some on Pudong articles, albeit a bit differently than I suggested above. I modified the Pudong article, created Shanghai/Downtown Pudong as a redirect to that, and created Shanghai/Pudong New Area as a disambig page. Comment or other contributions solicited.
Thanks for your efforts on this. I am rather unfamiliar with Pudong (not sure why.. apart from the airport I had little reason to go there). Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:17, 9 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
I have now run out of steam, will not look at it again for a week or so. Other contributions would be good. The only glaring gap I am aware of is that Downtown_Shanghai#Get_around is woefully incomplete.
User:PrinceGloria: I realise this does not combine Lujiahui and central Puxi as you wanted; that made no sense to me. It also does not cut Downtown Shanghai to as small an area as you suggested; that might be done later. However, I think I've addressed some of your concerns. What do you think? Pashley (talk) 20:33, 10 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
On first encountering the Shanghai article, it's district division is not very intuitive and doesn't seem to follow standard wikivoyage conventions. Couldn't London be taken as an example (which is a WV city, and not a WV region)? I don't know Shanghai, but if there are two or three areas (as in WV district pages) that are important to the traveler, then these could be grouped into a "Downtown" section, and the other areas could be grouped into "Inner suburbs" and "Outer suburbs". Currently, the relationship between Downtown_Shanghai and for example Shanghai/Changning, Shanghai/Hongkou, ... is not very clear and creates an artificial hierarchical layer. Also, is there a reason, why the Regionlist template is not used here? Xsobev (talk) 12:31, 23 February 2018 (UTC)Reply
I went ahead and converted the itemized district lists to regionlist templates using the colors from the districts map ("Image:Shanghai districts map.png"). The colors for the downtown districts are taken from Downtown Shanghai, which currently do not match the colors in the districts map. I still have the following concerns with the presentation of Shanghai:
Shanghai/Pudong New Area: This page seems unnecessary as it is of little interest to the traveler that there is a difference between the official district name/area and the one used here on Wikivoyage. I would completely removed it. If at all a one sentence explanation could be mentioned in the "understand" sections of Shanghai/Pudong and/or Shanghai/Nanhui.
Shanghai/Nanhui: This district should either have the same color range as all the other outer suburbs, or be moved to the list of inner districts. Alternatively, Shanghai/Pudong and Shanghai/Nanhui could be merged into one district, since there isn't much to see in Shanghai/Nanhui according to that page.
Downtown Shanghai: This page creates an unnecessary extra hierarchical level. I suggest to move all the relevant information back to Shanghai or to the respective downtown district pages. I don't expect any traveler to look for "Downtown Shanghai" in order to get information when visiting Shanghai. Once the information is spread around, this page should be deleted.
Shanghai/Old City: Should be a separate item on the list of districts in the list of downtown districts. Alternatively, it could be merged with Shanghai/Huangpu. Currently there is an overlap of listings in these two district pages.
The colors currently used in the downtown distric list match the ones from the map in Downtown Shanghai, but not the ones in the big districts map on Shanghai. Also, the map on Downtown Shanghai has the caption "inner districts" which is really inconsistent, and should rather say "downtown districts".
Since these seem like quite substantial changes to the current division, I didn't want to go ahead without input from other people. Also maybe some of these suggestions don't make any sense if you know the city. So I'm open to any other suggestions. Xsobev (talk) 11:24, 4 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
I was thinking to contribute to this talk for a week, but I still don't have clear thoughts to it. What is the best structure, this is a difficult question and I understand why it needs so much discussion. I need to know WV more and to compare other Shanghai tourist guides. What worries me more is outdated info, wrong formulations and parts that take too long space for some unimportant details. I'll come back when I see more clearly. Szalai.laci (talk) 15:41, 5 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
I've been in Shanghai for 2 years, and i like mostly the way User:PrinceGloria wanted: Downtown Puxi and Downtown Pudong together, and the rest is a big Suburb Area, with nothing to see (exception: watertowns). But if PrinceGloria continues missing (no talk contibution for 2 years), i alone will not cling to this structure, since it's far from the administrative one.
What i see as main question in the current discussion: Was it good to make the middle layer Downtown Puxi, between the main article and the downtown districts?
The main article starts with the structure and list of districts, that might scare away readers. But as a saviour, this sentence comes in:
"For the central districts which have most of the tourist attractions, hotels, restaurants and nightspots, see Downtown Puxi (...), Downtown Pudong."
So if i am a smart reader, i will skip to the Understand section, and read the page to the end, then go to Downtown Shanghai and Downtown Pudong. Reading it this way i had a very good experience, while the skipped part is the dry list of administrative districts, which has to be there as a table of content, or as explanation of the map, because this is the usual WV structure.
Look at Talk:Downtown_Shanghai#Guide?_Dotm?. What User:Ypsilon wrote there, i would take it as expert's view, since he seems to be a big guy on WV, as i look at his talk page. He surely saw that this is a middle layer page and he expressed satisfaction about the page, suggesting only some content changes. So i would keep the Downtown Shanghai there, as the best solution for the difficult problem of representing the complicated structure of Shanghai.
Xsobev, you mention London as an example. Why do you state London is a city and not a region? For me that means you expect London and SH to be treated in the same way: Downtown, inner suburbs, outer suburbs. But currently it is the structure of SH page too. That's why i ask. Changning and Hongkou are listed as districts in Downtown SH, so why do you think that can be confusing?
Shanghai/Pudong New Area: It included the content of Downtown Pudong, where all the attractions are. That was moved out to make a separate page. I agree with the move, but i would have moved only Lujiazui. I don't know Pudong very well, and i don't know how much would have left in the New_Area, probably some metro hubs, unimportant parks, and Maglev museum. Just like other suburbs, it is good to describe it in a page, but keep it far from the most visited pages, not to bore people. I propose to deal more with this question later, the other issues are big enough for such a few people who are active here.
Shanghai/Nanhui: I also want to merge it with Pudong_New_Area, but we need more discussion on that. Coloring can come after.
Downtown Shanghai: Why don't you expect a traveler to look for "Downtown Shanghai" when visiting Shanghai? I would definitely read downtown first or after the main page, especially if it is stated that this is what you should focus on.
Shanghai/Old City: It took me a while to discover this part of Shanghai. Poor area but it feels very Chinese. I wish there was a highlighted Old City on my map when i first visited SH. Just stating there is an old city somewhere in Huangpu, people would think it's all of Huangpu, or some parts are old, older, and very old - But if they see a round (ex-)walled city on the map, then its shape, size and existence becomes clear. There is no such administrative division, but it's worth for another exception.
Coloring: We better match the map with the list, and maybe consistent throughout the pages. Now the map has 4 colors in order to emphasize the 4 regions, while different nuances show districts within those. We could keep the map this way, and match the list (i guess it was that way before), but then the Downtown Shanghai page has different color sets. Acceptable compromise.
Alternatively we could follow London's many-color pattern: everything has a distinct color. In that case we need to make 2-3 separate maps: Donwtown, Inner Suburbs, Outer suburbs. More work, i guess, all because of some useless suburbs (well, from tourists' point of view). And why to make people look at several maps when they can have all in one?
How about adding the 8-10 colors from the "Shanghai inner districts" map, and all suburbs will have different shades of red? A line can be used to separate inner and outer suburbs. Adding Downtown Pudong would be good.
The "inner districts" map caption is inconsistent indeed. I wonder if the best is to make maps with no burnt-in caption, and the file has a title anyway, so anyone using it will know what to write in the caption. Also because later we might change it again to something like Central Shanghai. I don't know how easy it is to work with maps. Szalai.laci (talk) 07:28, 7 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
I was responsible for most of the last two batches of district changes; for the discussions see #Shanghai_districts & #District changes? for the 2013 changes & #Districts - Oh what a mess! for 2017. I think both were improvements, but am not sure it is right yet. I emphatically do not want to do a third round of changes!
Eventually we might convert Lujiazui from a redirect to Pudong into a separate article, add an article for the Free Trade Zone, & create separate articles for other Pudong districts. Then Nanhui would be just another district & the Pudong New Area article useless. However, we currently have neither enough content to fill such articles nor any proposal for a district structure, so that notion does not fly. Pashley (talk) 22:43, 10 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
OK, no third round of changes. Does that mean that you wouldn't add Old City to the list of districts and to the map? (it is currently on the map).
For the sake of Lujiazui, I would not restrict our notion of Downtown Shanghai to Puxi only.
Structure :
Downtown Shanghai
-Changning
-Hongkou
-Huangpu
-Jing'an
-Lujiazui
....
Inner suburbs
-Pudong New Area
......
Outer suburbs
-Nanhui
....
What is Lujiazui? There are several Free Trade Zones in Shanghai (How connected they are; or whether it is one FTZ with several parts - it's not clear for me yet).
Lujiazui = Donwtown Pudong = Lujiazui Financial and Trade Zone.
This is the definition I took from Chinese Wikipedia's Lujiazui article :
Borders: Luoshan Road to the east, Longyang Road to the south, and Huangpu River to the north and west.Szalai.laci (talk) 01:42, 11 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
I meant the Free Trade Zone at the northern end of Pudong, up around the port.
I'd say the Downtown Shanghai article handles this fine. The Old City is clearly visible on both the 1907 and the current map, and it is mentioned in the text of both the introductory & the Districts section. The handling in the Shanghai article could be improved, but I do not think that is very important. Pashley (talk) 17:03, 11 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for all your replies. Here are some answers to questions and comments:
Regarding "London" as example: I gave London as an example because I think it handles a large area very well. It is a "city", because of the "{{guidecity}}" at the end of the page. Shanghai currently is a "region", because of the "{{usableregion}}". And yes, I would handle Shanghai exactly the same way as London: Downtown/Central area, inner suburbs, outer suburbs. But that is currently not the way how it is done -- it is close though. The difference is a) Shanghai is treated as "region", b) most suburbs are treated as some kind of "region district" (which doesn't exist in the WV hierarchy; there is only a "city district" - see Wikivoyage:Geographical_hierarchy), c) there is a "city" within the region called "Downtown Shanghai", d) there is this "extra-hierarchical region" page Shanghai/Pudong New Area, which seems unimportant to the traveler. Furthermore, as a traveler I'm going to look for "London", "Shanghai", "Hong Kong", "Beijing" and not for "Downtown London", "Downtown Shanghai", "Downtown Hong Kong" or "Downtown Beijing". Of course there could be a "district" page called "Shanghai/Downtown" if it is considered useful, but certainly not a "city" called "Downtown Shanghai".
Regarding unimportant suburbs: If there are really suburbs that currently have their own "district" page and they are unimportant to the traveler because there is nothing to see, then I would say they should be removed. If not that, then there can be an intro text in the "Outer suburbs" section that they are unimportant and that a first time visitor can safely ignore them. I think that also means I agree with PrinceGloria's suggestions.
Regarding colors and maps: This has probably lower priority until we have a satisfying structure.
I hope this makes it clearer of why I think the current structure is not intuitive. I don't know Shanghai, but currently I don't see what makes its layout different to the one in London. Xsobev (talk) 16:13, 20 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
For the extension of w:Line 5, Shanghai Metro south into Fengxian, WP says construction started in 2014 & is expected to finish in 2017. That is odd; it looked almost complete to me when I left Shanghai in late 2012. However, I only saw the part in Minhang and the bridge, not the parts in Fengxian.
I also heard that a northern extension to Hongqiao Airport was planned, but saw no construction for that. Neither WP's map nor the one on the metro system's site currently shows either extension as operational.
Latest comment: 6 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Let's make a todo list, then we can see how we organize:
Pick a topic like Metro and go through all the articles and update metro info? Or take articles one by one and fully update them (Metro, new shopping malls, erroneous data, add what's missing)? Well, let's focus on the todo list.
The main problem described at #Getting_to_guide? has been dealt with. We now have Downtown Shanghai & all its districts are Usable so it can be Guide & DotM. On the other hand, any of the district articles could still be improved.
TODO#3
Delete closed venues. They are on this list. http://www.smartshanghai.com/specials/closed-venues/ It's a simple task. Does anybody want to take it? For example Hilton Hotel on Huashan Road 250 has closed in december 2017 or changed name to Kunlun. We're listing it in Jing'an: Sleep, and mention it one more time on that page. This example shows we are listing closed venues, but this is a special case where i will call and ask if this Kulnun hotel is the same hotel, and replace it. Szalai.laci (talk) 03:07, 14 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The Wuhan page has this useful information at most listings: (updated Oct 2015 | edit). This makes a lot more clear how accurate the info can be, so the reader can feel more secure or can look it up on other websites, depending also on the type of the venue, since a hill will never move, but a shop can close very suddenly.
What do you all think about using this? We need to see how it works first... Szalai.laci (talk) 03:27, 14 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
The more I look at this, the more complicated it looks. We could end up with abominations like 'Downtown Shanghai/Hongkou' as district name and 'Shanghai Municipality->Downtown Shanghai->Downtown Shanghai/Hongkou' in the breadcrumb display. Pashley (talk) 10:31, 23 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for sticking around and helping to make Shanghai's travel guide more usable. I wouldn't treat Shanghai as a "WV region", but as a "WV city". I made an overview of all Shanghai-related pages together with my proposal for structuring the list of Shanghai's districts: User:Xsobev/Shanghai-new. This would be along the lines of London and provide the traveler with an easier/quicker to understand layout of the city (for example only one level of hierarchy). Any comments welcome, Xsobev (talk) 16:51, 25 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
Whatever else we do, I now think my suggestion of moving the main article to Shanghai Municipality was a mistake. That is an important entity for the Chinese administrative system, but not for travellers hence not for us. Worth mentioning in the intro to this article & having a redirect in case someone searches for the Municipality, but not more than that.
Hence my suggested text for turning this article into a redirect (User:Pashley/Shanghai) is mostly useless, though I think some of it might be used to make the intro here shorter, more readable & more focused on essential points. Pashley (talk) 02:17, 26 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
"... shorter, more readable & more focused" is always welcome. Regarding the old district discussions, I'll read them in more detail (I mostly only skimmed over them). One point that stuck out is that someone is using Chicago as example (and Chicago also does without an artificial "downtown" hierarchy page). I added a dynamic map with district shapes to User:Xsobev/Shanghai-new. This might help identifying other issues with the district structure, and can hopefully be moved to the main Shanghai page very soon. Xsobev (talk) 10:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I now re-read the several district discussions and actually found support for my suggestion of getting rid of the extra hierarchical level that the Downtown Shanghai page creates (around 2009):
"I learned from the discussions on districtifying London that no cities should have three levels of articles. Therefore, I am not in favour of the above suggestion." (WT-en) ClausHansen 11:01, 17 December 2009 (EST)
"From my point of view, it would be better to follow Chicago's approach, which exactly did wait for districts to grow before splitting them up - I think it's the best way to achieve coverage - people are more likely to add content if there is something there already." --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) talk 10:30, 17 December 2009 (EST)
"I tend to think that both good content and good structure (which makes it easier to figure out where to add that content), encourage good contributions. Perhaps we could think here about a possible "final" districts scheme and what it would look like, but for the time being, keep larger districts in use that could in the future be broken into parts. That's precisely what we did with Chicago, which is generally a good article to look at for guidance. You might also be interested to look at Wikivoyage_talk:Geographical_hierarchy#Optimal_districts_schemes, which was inspired by this discussion." --(WT-en) Peter 19:00, 20 December 2009 (EST)
The alternative suggestion (around 2016/2017) is:
Have a "Shanghai Municipality" as "WV region", create a "Downtown Shanghai" page as "WV city"
It is not entirely sure how the rest that is not covered in "Downtown Shanghai" is treated
The other main points of discussion are related to:
French Concession: should not be a main district page, and in what relation does it stand to Xuhui and Luwan
"Outer suburbs": either one or two big pages covering several outer districts, or one district page for each of the official districts
In what relation do Pudong, Liujiazui and Nanhui stand (and Pudong New Area)
Leaving the "other main points" aside for now, I am still in favour of the general structure discussed in 2009. The 2016/2017 suggestion may be conceivable, but the implementation was left incomplete. This is precisely why I think the current Shanghai structure is still not intuitive. So I only see two ways forward: a) flat hierarchy with Shanghai as "WV city" and several "WV district" pages; b) deeper hierarchy with Shanghai Municipality as "WV region", "Shanghai" as "WV city" and something like "Outer Shanghai" as "WV city", with each of the current "WV districts" assigned to one of the two latter city pages. I would go for option a). Xsobev (talk) 11:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
I would vehemently oppose "Shanghai Municipality as "WV region", "Shanghai" as "WV city"". Shanghai Municipality is just the official term for Shanghai; they are essentially synonyms and any scheme that has two separate articles for them (including my own suggestion that we rename the main article to Shanghai Municipality and make Shanghai a sort of disambig) would be a serious blunder.
To me Shanghai/French Concession seems just fine as a WV district. I've lived in Shanghai & (at least among expats) the term is till in active use. Xuhui & Luwan are its component districts. Luwan is no longer an official district; it is now administered as part of Huangpu, but we are not required to follow administrative boundaries exactly & in this case should not.
Thanks for the pointers regarding the French Concession and Pudong New Area. It's good to have them in one place if discussions around them arise again.
We definitely agree on opposing the "Shanghai Municipality as "WV region", "Shanghai" as "WV city""-option. However, we don't seem to be on the same page what that means regarding the current state of the article. The only logical and WV-consistent way would be to remove the extra hierarchy created by "Downtown Shanghai" and move information either to Shanghai or to the appropriate downtown district pages. I'll try to argue for it again from a different perspective: The mentioned "Downtown Shanghai" page is fully contained within "Shanghai", so would really have to be in "Shanghai/Downtown Shanghai". The districts that are fully contained within "Downtown Shanghai" would then need to be in "Shanghai/Downtown Shanghai/Changning", "Shanghai/Downtown Shanghai/Hongkou", etc. (a structure that does not exist on WV), but are currently in "Shanghai/Changning", "Shanghai/Hongkou", etc. So the intermediate hierarchy of the "Downtown Shanghai" page has to be removed. Xsobev (talk) 11:57, 27 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
The 2-levels structure is more simple and clear compared to the 3-levels structure that has a mid-level of Downtown Shanghai.
Simplicity is an advantage for various reader types: If the reader wants to read only 10 minutes from WV, he needs to see that there are enough attractions to consider further reading and visiting the city.
Others afford different amounts of time, and some people want to read each page. If there is much repetition or fragmentation by levels, they will also leave the website before they understand the structure of all we have here.
I see the long discussions throughout the years, but indeed there was a notable support for no extra hierarchical level. The cities I read recently (London, Beijing, Paris) all show that 2 levels are enough even for huge cities. Note that Beijing managed it well, with so many similarities with Shanghai.
I know merging the Shanghai and Downtown Shanghai articles would result in a huge page, but most readers will skip shopping if they are looking for culture, and so on. Szalai.laci (talk) 02:20, 29 March 2018 (UTC)Reply
The trouble with "Shanghai as a whole should be rescheduled for a later point" is that to become DotM an article must have Guide status & that requires that all districts be at least Usable. Shanghai is not close to that; see #Getting_to_guide? above. Pashley (talk) 13:25, 25 April 2018 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your reply. As far as I see DotMs, they are there to highlight good examples of WV guides both to tell a traveler "the information in this article is worthwhile reading and very usable if you want to travel there, and generally this is what you can expect from good WV guides", and to contributors "this is how a good WV guide should look like, you can use it as a reference for your edits". And I think Downtown Shanghai and Shanghai are just not quite there yet (the reasons are given in the discussions above). Unfortunately, I don't have a solution to the "all districts must be usable" guidelines you point out (as I can only help changing that to a minimal degree, not knowing the city let alone the suburbs). Also, since I raised my worries very late, I won't stand in the way of having the current Downtown Shanghai as DotM now, but after that we should really get Downtown Shanghai and Shanghai in a better shape, and who knows there might be a Shanghai DotM soon ... Xsobev (talk) 11:03, 26 April 2018 (UTC)Reply
I think we should cut the Downtown article to just the four really central Puxi districts & have all other districts (both official administrative ones & ones we choose to treat as separate districts for WV reasons, Shanghai/Nanhui & Shanghai/Zhujiajiao) just be districts under Shanghai.
Changing the text in the Downtown article would be easy & would simplify that article. Adjusting the IsPartOf links in lower-level articles would also be easy. However, it would also need changes at Shanghai#Districts & changes to maps; those would be harder.
I would postpone this proposal until we resolve the general districts structure and WV hierarchy (see my comments in #Renaming this article?) Also with my proposed flat hierarchy, your proposal would much easier to complete, since it would only mean to adjust the "districts list" on the main city page.
Latest comment: 6 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I would like to review some parts of the content and see how we can improve it. I think crucial text changes need to be discussed, and next month we are the destination of the month, so more teamwork is necessary. Firstly, the description of Xuhui is "The central district of the French Concession." I would understand that as the Xuhui District lies in the middle of the French C., which is not the case. Other interpretations are also possible, but we can do better and clearer than that. Can I replace it with this?: "Contains most of the French Concession and extends much to the South."Szalai.laci (talk) 08:40, 10 April 2018 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 years ago25 comments4 people in discussion
Hi, I know Shanghai districting has been extensively discussed, but I have some more suggestions:
Divide "Pudong New Area" into Central Pudong (just Lujiazui and Century Avenue, roughly) and Outer Pudong (everything else)
Categorize Central Pudong as part of Downtown Shanghai, categorize Outer Pudong as a suburb
Combine the inner and outer suburbs into one list, called just Suburbs
Merge the Downtown Shanghai page into the main Shanghai page. So the main page will have approximately 20 districts in 2 groups - 10 downtown and 10 in the suburbs. This will get rid of the confusing double hierarchy, and reduce duplicate content between the articles. Layout will be similar to London, which has 3 groups of about 10 districts each. I can make a new map for this (I am thinking the 10 downtown districts in various warm colors, and the 10 suburb districts in various cool colors).
My thoughts (ordered to serve as rebuttal to some of the above) would be:
Keep Pudong & Nanhui as they are. People in Shanghai talk about Pudong & Nanhui, meaning about what those articles cover, & they describe things like the university up north by the port (well away from Lujiazui) as being in Pudong. Nanhui is already classed as a suburb. As I see it "Outer Pudong" is nonsense.
Keep Shanghai/Pudong New Area as it is, an extra-hierarchical region. It is now the only official district on that side of the river, and the area that has been made a Special Economic Zone. Government & media often use "Pudong" to refer to that whole area.
Aim at a structure (at least mostly) about like London:
Groups of districts (at least generally) do not get articles, but they do have headings in the main article like London#Inner_London. Shanghai is already mostly like that, e.g. Shanghai#Inner_suburbs.
All district breadcrumbs point to London.
Decide what to do with Downtown Shanghai. I created it mainly for two reasons, answering the criticisms at #Districts - Oh what a mess! that Shanghai navigation was too confusing, and creating something that could be DotM since all its sub-districts were at least usable.
I would strongly favour keeping it, but would not scream too loudly if consensus is to merge it back into the main article.
The notion of including Pudong here does make me want to scream. They have completely different history & feel quite different to the traveller.
Thanks everyone for sticking around and joining in the district discussion. Rereading the discussion in #Districts - Oh what a mess!, I think there was a consensus that there is only a small set of districts/areas that are interesting to travelers and that these should be highlighted in some way. These districts/areas are "People's Square + Nanjing + Bund (+ maybe the Old Town)", French Concession and Lujiazui. The main aim was to create "a simple article" for these really central areas. Insofar I understand why User:Pashley created the current Downtown Shanghai article. But I think the same goal can be achieved using a more conventional WV structure, which starts to take shape in the more recent district discussions (including this one). More concretely this means merging the info in Downtown Shanghai back into Shanghai and using "sections" rather than "articles" to provide that "highlighting" structure, while taking London as inspiration. Xsobev (talk) 09:28, 1 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
How about User:Xsobev/Shanghai-new#Districts_(Suggestion_2) for a more concrete suggestion trying to take the comments above into account? I'm most sure about the "Central Shanghai" section, which does group Shanghai/Pudong together with the most important Downtown Shanghai districts, but without saying that it is part of "Downtown Shanghai". Regarding the "Inner Shanghai" and "Outer Shanghai" sections, I'm unsure, since I don't know how important their division is or which ones could be merged to accumulate critical POI mass (which might take care of the many "outline" districts). Finally, regarding Shanghai/Pudong New Area, I think the content of this page would be much better in the "Understand" section of Shanghai, maybe in an "Orientation" subsection, once Downtown Shanghai and Shanghai are reunited. The same goes for the content from Shanghai/Nanjing Road. Any comments? Xsobev (talk) 09:59, 1 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
My version of a concrete suggestion is now at User:Pashley/Shanghai. Reduce downtown to four core districts, list the five others now in Downtown Shanghai, plus Pudong & Minhang, as Inner suburbs, retain The Islands as a separate heading, put everything else under Outer suburbs.
I made no changes to the map or colour codes; those would need work before this version became useful & I do not do maps. Volunteers? Pashley (talk) 02:05, 2 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
At one point this road and the Bund had their own district articles & discussion reached consensus that was wrong. I converted this one to a disambiguation page, but am open to a better solution. Pashley (talk) 02:21, 2 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
That is likely not the only thing that needs to move. I did not even try to put the districts in the best order, only to get them in the right sections. Pashley (talk) 08:40, 2 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your suggestion. I think Shanghai/Pudong would be better in the "Central Shanghai" section, since then all of the important areas that a traveler should see if visiting the place, can be found there (that would be in line with the original goal which lead to the creation of Downtown Shanghai). Regarding the islands, I think a separate section for an almost empty outline district is a bit too much. I'm fine with the other groupings. Taking User:Pashley's suggestion as a starting point would it make sense to try to merge some of the districts? (Irrespective of that my arguments about merging Downtown Shanghai back into Shanghai still hold.) Xsobev (talk) 08:55, 3 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
1) I don't think the suburb articles need to be merged - few of them are really empty, they may fill up more someday, and you lose the clarity of one district/one article.
2) Functionally Pudong is part of the center city, but if "Downtown" is defined as the "historic core" like User:Pashley did, then it is logical to list Pudong in a different section - as long as it is prominent, i.e. the very first suburb listed, and with bold text to draw the eye to it - so I am OK with User:Pashley's suggestion here.
1) I suggested merging as a way to get these many outline districts into a more usable state. For example Berlin doesn't have a "one district/one article division", and I think it works quite well there (at least for the outer suburbs). But I'm least concerned about this point, and because I don't have any local knowledge, I'm happy to leave the decision with other people.
2) My preference would be to call this new district section "Central Shanghai" rather than simply "Downtown" (apologies, I didn't see that the first time I looked at User:Pashley's suggestion). However, calling the section "Downtown" doesn't exclude the possibility of including Shanghai/Pudong (which is currently introduced as "Downtown Pudong" on Shanghai). I have a slightly stronger concern about this decision, but could also live with the other possibility (Then we can call the district section "Historic downtown" right away).
(undent) My suggestions (or any other major change) should not be done yet. Downtown Shanghai is the current DotM; we should not mess with it until that ends.
Another extra-hierarchical region is Shanghai/Pudong New Area; I think it & Nanjing Road are fine as they are. but I created both.
Technically, Downtown Shanghai is not an extra region; currently it is in the hierarchy & some breadcrumbs point to it. However, turning it into an extra region might be a good idea, a compromise between deleting it (which some have suggested but I'd be loathe to do) & just keeping it as is (which complicates things, in particular producing ugly breadcrumb trails). Pashley (talk) 10:57, 10 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
I agree with User:Pashley that major changes should only be done after the DotM is over. I'm also generally in favour of applying smaller uncontroversial changes, so that they are out of the way of the big discussion, however, I don't see any of these at the moment. More specifically, I would agree to the "Downtown" section in User:Pashley/Shanghai only if we merged the Downtown Shanghai back to Shanghai. If not, then a single "Downtown" regionlist item as we currently have it on Shanghai would be less confusing (rather than duplicating the list of districts in downtown). User:Pashley, may I ask you for concrete reasons why you want to keep Downtown Shanghai? I honestly can't see any benefit in it, but maybe I overlooked something really obvious. Xsobev (talk) 07:59, 11 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
Since Downtown Shanghai has been DotM, it absolutely must be kept in some form so the link in Previous Destinations of the month will work. However, turning it into a redirect to a section of the main article would meet that requirement.
I & others did a lot of work to create the article, & I'm naturally reluctant to just discard that work by moving everything back into the main article. Mostly, that would be reasonably easy to do since most of the text in the Downtown article was taken from the main article in the first place. Other stuff, though, might clutter or complicate the main article.
Perhaps most important, creating the article was an attempt to deal with the problems mentioned at #Districts_-_Oh_what_a_mess!. I think it at least partially succeeds & moving everything back into the main article would undo some progress.
My current thinking (I've changed my mind more than once before) is keep the Downtown article as an extra region that covers only the four really central districts, make all district breadcrumbs point to the main article, and put text in the four lower level articles linking to Downtown for an overview. Pashley (talk) 12:38, 11 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
In User:Pashley/Shanghai I have now given Pudong its own section User:Pashley/Shanghai#Pudong rather than lumping it with the inner suburbs. It is not really a suburb & is important. I think this at least comes close to solving the controversy about whether to include Pudong as part of Downtown.
The main thing User:Pashley/Shanghai would need before it could be dropped into the main article would be a map with a revised colour scheme & perhaps other changes. I do not do maps. Any volunteers?
Pudong would need its own colour, distinct from both Downtown & the suburbs. Since the old city is surrounded by Huangpu district, we also need to keep a good visual contrast there; the current colors work but they might need to change if the overall scheme is revised. See also earlier discussion at #Map_stuff.
Thanks, User:Pashley, for giving some reasons for keeping Downtown Shanghai. Unfortunately, they couldn't convince me, but that's a different matter. Regarding the main reason, I pointed out in an earlier comment, that the same goals can be achieved without an extra hierarchical level. So we won't go back a step, but forward, since a more consistent WV structure is better for readers and maintainers. As a tourist right now, I would go back and forth reading between Shanghai and Downtown Shanghai to get anywhere close to an intuitive understanding of the city to find out what's important or not for a first visit. Regarding the DotM reason, I think this is too administrative to get in the way of improving the actual content. I completely understand your reason that you don't want an article to disappear in which you put a lot of work, but the content (other than just the pointers to Shanghai) you created wouldn't be deleted, it would continue living in the main Shanghai page.
How about we proceed as follows once the DotM is over: We implement the proposal (of which the details still need to be confirmed) to move most districts out of Downtown Shanghai. Once this is done, we look at the resulting Downtown Shanghai page. My guess would be that it'll start looking like the other non-district areas we have for Shanghai (Shanghai/The Bund, Shanghai/Pudong New Area and Nanjing Road) - and all these pages would be much better in the understand section of Shanghai. If my guess is wrong, then I'll rethink my merging proposal. Xsobev (talk) 07:34, 14 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
Nice. Can you drop one into User:Pashley/Shanghai & fix the colour codes? I tried & it did not work for me. 21:53, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
I like the maps very much. My first impression was that everything is fine, there are districts and suburbs. Only Minhang was in the wrong place, on the map it is a district but in fact it's a suburb. Now i got it, the yellow colors are the four central districts, and other districts became inner suburbs equal to Minhang. The map says living, walking, partying in these inner suburbs is the same, but I think in Minhang it's suburb life while in the others it's district life. So the maps are good, the concept that it reflects, that we spoke about before is the one I don't agree with. But if you switched Pudong's and Minhang's color, would make sense for me. Since pudong is both Central district (The Lujiazui part) and inner district (the rest of it). And the Pudong color now feels like an in-between inner and outer district for me, which would fit Minhang. Szalai.laci (talk) 06:01, 16 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
I'd say Minhang should stay as it is, an inner suburb; to me it seems as much that as Putuo or Yangpu. I may be biased since I lived & worked in Minhang.
As for Pudong, it is a special case. In terms of the districts as we have defined them & the text I've written at User:Pashley/Shanghai, the current map's treatment of Pudong is exactly correct; it has its own contrasting colour. It is neither part of Downtown as we have (I think correctly) defined it nor a suburb, so it should not use those colours.
At some point we might want to divide up the current Pudong article, perhaps into Central Pudong for Lujiazui & (which?) nearby areas, Northern Pudong (up toward the port) & Eastern Pudong (over by the airport), but we are nowhere near that point now. We do not have enough text to make this desirable, or any proposed district structure, or anyone volunteering for the considerable work involved. Until/unless that happens, though I'd say current colours are fine. Pashley (talk) 07:45, 16 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
The map caption currently says "Inner districts map", but I think it should be "District map covering downtown, Pudong and inner suburbs", or something similar. Furthermore, if the plan is to take User:Pashley/Shanghai and replace the corresponding sections in the main article directly, then I think that a lot of the text should be moved to an "Orientation" section in "Understand". Currently many of the district definitions are of quite a technical nature, which is not very relevant to the first-time visitor. Furthermore, the intro text should contain more text of why it is worth visiting Shanghai, and not how Shanghai is divided into districts geographically, politically or historically - a point made elsewhere, but I forgot where. I'm happy to move the text I have in mind to an orientation section if nobody objects. Xsobev (talk) 08:27, 18 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 years ago12 comments4 people in discussion
older map
I think the new Shanghai map above is fine, but there are some problems with the "inner districts" map. The old inner districts map is on the right for comparison.
1) The new map has lines for lots of roads; to me these are just clutter & I think it would be better without them. It we are going to show any transit routes, it should be metro lines & I'm not sure even those are a good idea.
2) The contrast between the Old City and the rest of Huangpu (which are treated in separate articles) is visually less clear in the new map than the old.
3) The new map appears to follow the official administrative districts rather than the ones we describe at Downtown_Shanghai#Districts, which the older map does follow. The new map does not label Luwan & puts the Huangpu/French Concession border in a different place, moving Luwan into Huangpu. It also has "French Concession (Xuhui)" though the two are not the same. As I see it, the borders & labels were correct in the old map.
4) It can be argued, & has been somewhere above or in the archive, that we should follow the official structure here & get rid of the arguably archaic "French Concession" name. I would consider that a mistake. Pashley (talk) 08:49, 16 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, User:Ar2332, for drawing the new map. I also agree with User:Pashley with points 1-3, and would add that the color of the "French Concession (Xuhui)" is too similar to the inner suburbs (and therefore the downtown area doesn't jump right at you which it should). Regarding point 4 I leave the decision with User:Pashley and others, since they know the area best. One consideration to follow official district boundaries, is that it is much easier to create dynamic maps with mapshape overlays (because only the wikidata item has to be specified), however, this technical advantage shouldn't intervene with more important considerations. Xsobev (talk) 08:14, 18 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
Also, is there a reason, why you chopped off some of the districts in the new map? Shouldn't they be shown completely? Xsobev (talk) 08:29, 18 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
When I get a little free time I will address User:Pashley's proposals with a slightly modified map.
Sorry, I was referring to the map "File:Shanghai districts map inner.svg", where only parts of Yangpu, Minhang, French Concession (Xuhui) and Pudong are shown. Xsobev (talk) 13:09, 18 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
I wanted the city center to be visible in high enough resolution that (for example) the Old City could be easily seen. This meant that I couldn't show too much area. So the outer edges of those districts were cut off. You can still see them in the big map of course. Ar2332 (talk) 15:43, 18 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
I uploaded new versions of the maps which should address the above concerns. Hard-reload this page (ctrl+shift+R) to see them. Thoughts? Ar2332 (talk) 19:53, 20 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
I agree to chop off Yangpu, Minhang etc. in order to rightly zoom the map. I think these strong green colors make the inner suburbs rather "jumping right at you" than the center. Now the French Concession has the right shape, but I suggest showing also Luwan and Xuhui with light text and light border between, like on the old map, since we write about them but no map shows where they are within what we call French Concession. Szalai.laci (talk) 02:04, 22 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
Thanks Ar2332 & nice work! However, I still have a quibble. At least to my eye, Jing'an is an odd colour, orange-yellow where the other Downtown districts are shades of red or pink. Could we change Jing'an to something that makes it more clearly part of Downtown? Pashley (talk) 23:19, 30 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
User:Ar2332 or other map makers. I think this still needs some fairly small changes, adding labels for Luwan & Xuhui as Szalai.laci suggests, and modifying the colour scheme so the downtown districts show up more clearly as a shades-of-red group. That definitely means changing the colour for Jing'an; I'm not sure if French Concession should change as well. Pashley (talk) 18:56, 3 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
Swapping colours of Jing'an & Pudong would definitely be an improvement. I'll leave it to those more graphically oriented than I to work out whether it is the best solution. Pashley (talk) 13:33, 21 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion
Recently User:Ar2332 made a number of edits moving text from Downtown back into the main article; nearly all of it was text I'd moved the other way to create Downtown. Those edits have now been reverted because they should wait until Downtown is no longer DotM; discussion at User_talk:Ar2332#Downtown_Shanghai_edits.
When the DotM period ends, we should do something, but before then we need to decide between two strategies:
keep the Downtown article as an extra-hierarchical region with an overview for the whole area
I've argued above for the second strategy & I still have a preference for that, but looking at Ar2332's edits convinced me the first could also work. The only hard part would be that the map & text about the old concessions now in the intro to Downtown Shanghai seem worth keeping & it is not obvious where they'd fit in the main article, in the Understand or Downtown section, perhaps a new History or Overview section?
So once the DotM period ends (tomorrow?) we can drop User:Pashley/Shanghai in to replace intro & Districts section of main article, change all district breadcrumbs to point to main article, & reinstate most or all of Ar2332's text-moving edits.
Whether we then make Downtown a redirect or edit it into an extra region with an overview for the area still seems to be an open question. I'm now close to neutral on that. Pashley (talk) 11:07, 31 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
Hi, Thanks a lot to everyone who was involved in these recent (and massive) changes to Shanghai (User:Pashley, User:Ar2332, User:Szalai.laci and possibly others). I'm glad we now have the flat hierarchy as it currently stands following general wikivoyage practices. I'll look at the finer details to see if there are any unresolved matters in the next time. Xsobev (talk) 12:07, 23 July 2018 (UTC)Reply
To the right is the map with all Wikidata items for the districts of Shanghai. This should simplify the work in case we want to change the district set-up in the future. The tool Wikidata Extractor has been used to create the mapshapes.--Renek78 (talk) 21:02, 21 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
to indicate that. Pashley (talk) 04:32, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
