Talk:Place (United States Census Bureau)

Merger

The definitions of place, incorporated place and census-designated place, on the Census Bureau website are fairly concise. The Wikipedia article on incorporated place is practically nonexistent and the article on census-designated place mostly explains how a CDP resembles, but is not, an incorporated place. This could be clarified, as the Census Bureau does, by defining an incorporated place and saying that a CDP resembles an incorporated place but has no government of its own. I think the whole topic can be concisely defined in a single article headed by the Census Bureau definition of "place".

If there are no objections (and nobody beats me to it) I'll work on the merger over the next week or so. Rsduhamel 15:36, 31 March 2007 (UTC) (also see response to Moreau36 below)

Strong Oppose: The term CDP has meaning and it has been around since the 1980 census. Did you know that prior to 1980, these places were named unincorporated place but with nearly similar guidelines as today's CDP. The only reason the name changed was because townships in the Midwest and Northeast were upset that they were coined "unincorporated", although they are legally incorporated, but the population were sparse. Not only is it happening in your county, but in states like Florida and Maryland, which has the highest concentration of unincorporated places and population. Speaking of which, I picked up the 2007 edition of American Map Road Atlas and to my surprise, La Presa, California and Winter Gardens, California were added. --Moreau36 21:19, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

To add, not all CDPs have a "community name". Yes, they are densley settled, but without a specific name. Thus names are generally given either in relation to the nearby main incorporated place or topographical region. Examples are:

• Vero Beach South, Florida
• Lake Worth Corridor, Florida
• Inverness Highlands South, Florida
• West Puente Valley, California -- not a community, rather a dense uninocrporated "island" (surrounded by other incorporated places) in relation to the city of La Puente
• South San Jose Hills, California -- not a community, rather, an settled area south of the San Jose Hills near Pomona
• University, Florida -- again not the official name, rather an settled area in relation to the University of South Florida
• Lakeside, Florida -- not a community name but its' in relation to Doctors Inlet.

Others have the combination of two or more communities, as you should of read in the article:

• Florence-Graham, California
• Egypt Lake-Leto, Florida
• Suitland-Silver Hill, Maryland
• Cascade-Fairwood, Washington

I can go on and on, but you should get my point on how important Census Designated Places are, just naming the places above unincorporated communities would be a little bit misleading.

As far as matching a place with a ZIP Code. Remember, not every place (even incorporated ones) have their own ZIP. A few of these I know of are:

• Springfield, Florida, Callaway, Florida, and Cedar Grove, Florida. All three are incorporated municipalities (with city halls), but uses nearby Panama City as their addresses.

I think that a purpose of a CDP is to gather a "nucleus" of unincorporated area to be statically comparable with their counterparts. This includes set boundaries, which must be visible. Also NOTE that, these boundaries are not grandfathered in as they will likely change by 2010. --Moreau36 21:50, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

You said you strongly oppose merging the articles but your argument only states the importance of CDPs. It says nothing about the merits of the merger. Maybe you object to my brief definitions in the merge proposal but that can be addressed by anyone who wants to edit the final article.

I am not proposing deleting the article on census designated place. I'm just saying that the Census Bureau's use of the terms "place", "incorporated place" and "census designated place" are so closely entwined that three separate articles is more confusing than useful. The topic is not broad enough for three separate articles either.

The topic can be concisely covered by a single article defining "place" as used by the Census Bureau then further defining what an incorporated place and a census designated place are. The "place" article as it now stands does just that. Its also about 90% material copied directly from the Geographic Areas Reference Manual from United States Census Bureau so the information is accurate. The separate article on census designated place appears to be accurate but has a lot of complex rewording of the simple definitions in the Geographic Areas Reference Manual. If someone else thinks some of the material in the CDP article needs to be retained, be my guest, I'm just one editor. Rsduhamel 00:36, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I'm agnostic about the merger--so long as no one starts "fixing" all the myriad links to census-designated place to this article, I don't really care. But as an FYI, the GARM manual that you are referencing and copying from is from 1990. Although much of the high-level descriptions are still valid, it is quite likely that some details may no longer be applicable. older ≠ wiser 02:36, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "fixing" the links. Since you put it in quotes I assume you mean that they won't be broken so they won't need fixing. I don't know how to handle all the links to the current CDP article. That's one reason I put out a call for suggestions. I just think it's counterproductive to have three short articles with so much overlap. There are people better-skilled than I to argue about how to handle the technical problems of the merger.

As far as the age of the references is concerned, the manual is a good start but someone can always update the information. Rsduhamel 18:08, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

No, what I meant is that if the merge is successful, then census-designated place will be a redirect to this article. Some editors have an annoying penchant for assuming that any such redirects are broken and need to be "fixed", which is simply a misconception. Even if there is support at the present time for merging the articles, in the future it may well make sense to separate them again. Even if the articles are merged now, it would be better to leave most of the links to census-designated place untouched, rather than have hundreds, if not thousands, of articles edited for no useful purpose. older ≠ wiser 22:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I understood you. I was referring to the famous quote "If something ain't broke, don't fix it." You're saying that if the articles are merged the redirects should remain as redirects in case the article is separated again. I agree. Rsduhamel 06:02, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) Agree: The parent article is too short, and would be helped by including both child articles. Nothing would be lost, and nothing would be missed by post-merger searches because redirects will take people to the parent article that will contain all the information the children now include. JD Lambert^(T|C) 21:21, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Strong Oppose: It doesn't matter if this article is short; incorporated places are not the same as places. Merging the articles would create confusion. -Jdmalouff 15:32, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I think merging it is a bad idea, considering the fact it is large enough to have its own article, plus I never would have found this article had it not been on its own. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.230.194.117 (talk) 20:43, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Citation needed tag in location criteria

User:Bkonrad tagged the following paragraph with a CN tag:

The Census Bureau lists a location (latitude and longitude) for each CDP. However, their criteria for establishing the location does not correspond to the criteria used by the United States Geologic Survey (USGS) for locating named communities. As such the location of a CDP may differ widely from that shown on maps for the community by the same name. The Census Bureau location of a CDP tends to be near the geographic center of the CDP. The USGS location for a community is usually near a major road intersection near the economic center of the community.

I admit that I was uneasy about including the paragraph because it makes statements I can't back up with a citation. However it is merely stating the obvious. Anyone can compare the locations of CDPs as published by the Census Bureau to the locations of the named communities as published by the USGS and see that they rarely, if ever are near each other. So, the criteria are different. Also, checking the locations on a map shows that the USGS locations are almost always near a major intersection and the Census Bureau locations are near the center of the CDP. Does this count as original research? I don't think so according to the no original research policy. I also think the paragraph has useful information worth having in the article. That said, any ideas where to find the citations to back it up? Rsduhamel 06:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

It reads like OR to me. FWIW, the only data I've seen from the Census Bureau is FIPS data which is maintained by the USGS. older ≠ wiser 13:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I've been getting my location data from the FIPS55 data link on http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic. I have yet to see this agree with the location in any Wikipedia article about a CDP (that I haven't put the FIPS location in). The Census Bureau has a list of "place" locations at http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/. This doesn't seem to agree with any of the articles or with the FIPS data. Is ths because the boundaries of the CDP have changed since the data in the articles was placed there or since the list was created? Rsduhamel 20:25, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, well I'm not actually sure what http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/ is or how the Census uses that information. If you have to go digging into the tables used by the TIGER mapping system to see latitude and longitude -- without any clear indications of what the table means -- we're definitely in OR territory. I think the TIGER system is intended to be a graphical representation of Census geographic areas, but not an authoritative indication of precise locations. This indicates that the TIGER data is more about the shapes and boundaries than the central location of a place. Anyhow, it certainly seems OR to draw conclusions about something like this based on observations derived from a very complex set of data. older ≠ wiser 21:34, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Found a reference at http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/tigerfaq?Q19.Rsduhamel 02:09, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Received the following e-mail from the USGS:

Your inquiry to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Science Information Center was referred to the Geographic Names Office for reply.

Go to our homepage at <http://geonames.usgs.gov>; click on domestic, and then in the body on Metadata. Scroll to Primary Point where the relevant passage reproduced below can be found.

The primary point of a populated place is the center of original place, if known, such as the city or town hall, main post office, or town square regardless of changes over time.

We can add, if none of these can be determined, especially in small rural areas, the main intersection of the original community is used regardless of the amorphous expansion or development.

For Lou Yost

Manager GNIS

703.648.4552

I also did a search based on the last paragraph and found http://geonames.usgs.gov/faqs.html which references "main intersection". Rsduhamel 06:19, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Technical problem with reference

The reference for the Canadian equivalent of a CDP isn't rendering right. I can't see a problem with the syntax. Someone with better eyes than I needs to fix it. Rsduhamel 15:16, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Fixed it. must have been some non-printing character in the reference. I retyped it exactly as before and it looks normal now. Rsduhamel 06:08, 7 April 2007 (UTC)