Talk:Suburbs and localities (Australia)

Proposed rewrite

Please take a squiz at my proposed rewrite of this article.

I don't like this article as it currently stands. At the moment, it basically an explanation about the regulatory situation of suburbs and "localities". This gives people a really poor idea of the situation. They're not (just) some formal mechanism for determining a part of an address. Instead, they're the culturally-normal way of specifying places within a region, and they're used in addresses. In order to be a useful article on Wikipedia, I think it needs to try and answer the following questions:

1. What kind of localities are there in Australia?
2. How does the concept of locality differ in Australia and other countries? Especially for readers with an American background.
3. What is the official implementation of this system?

The last question is the least important, but it's the only one the current article, I think, tries to understand.

I have a proposed rewrite of the article. It has a different title. It uses terminology differently. It's an article that's meant to take up the same space as this one, but it's not an improved article, but rather (just) a different article. So I don't want to just Be Bold and replace this one. But I also don't want people to expect my replacement article to be "perfect" before I put it in place, so unless I get (what I think) are reasonable and strong objections, with "reasonable" understood as "in the context of a constructive debate that can forseeably result in a happy compromise".

I'm not happy yet with my definition of the word "suburb". It does a poor job of describing exactly what an Australian suburb is—not a worse job than any other on Wikipedia, but in its context, it probably gives a misleading idea about how a city is built-up of suburbs. The Victorian Guidelines speaks of "identifiable entity" that is "comparable to existing suburbs". I have a good idea of what that means. There will be a group of shops (or some other community centre) with houses near it. "Near" is understood relative to the design of the suburb. And it's trivial to come up with apparent counterexamples to that simplistic definition. So I would appreciate it if anyone knows of a good explanation of what an Australian suburb is—one that satisfies Australians, while (more importantly) helping Americans and other people understand what Australians mean when we say "suburb".

Also, I've found it really difficult to use the word "locality" in the way this article does, even though I wanted to (for consistency's sake). From a brief check of the Queensland Place Names Act 1994 and the Victorian Geographic Place Names Act 1998, "locality" isn't an statutorially-defined term. For that matter, neither is suburb. Instead, they're just used as if everyone knows what they mean. Now, based on my experience, locality is used in the following ways:

1. To refer to bounded localities in a "rural context" in contrast to the "urban" term suburb — presumably, this includes towns even though these are considered urban in other contexts.
2. To refer to official or unofficial unbounded localities—the "secret suburbs" of [1]. (These are described in Melways as "localities" and shown in title case, in contrast to the capital letters used for suburbs. Note that the article itself isn't being presented as a source for the definition of the word, but just so you know the sort of thing I'm talking about.)
3. To refer collectively to bounded and unbounded localities. This is the definition given in the Guideline for Geographic Names Victoria (2004).

So seeing as "locality" seems to be mired in unclarity, and the entire reason to use the terms "suburb" (and presumably other words) is to be clear for normal (Australian) people, I've gone for the Victorian Guideline's three-way distinction between suburb, town and rural district. (Although I personally would've considered a place with a township as a town, and a rural district without a township as an undifferentiated place, but I will bow to documented use.)

Anyway, I hope people can offer some constructive comments + edits.

—Felix the Cassowary 15:36, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

While I agree with the push to restructure it, there seems an overly Victorian focus. In WA it works rather differently as only "localities" have legal status, although they can be gazetted SUB or LOCB in the Gazetteer. Localities also do not cover the entire state, especially in rural areas. "Towns" simply refer to townsites and have no relation whatsoever to the geographic naming system, they're basically a land titles invention managed under a different act (Land Act). Many gazetted townships are not even towns and have no people in them (we're not even talking ghost towns, many - e.g. Congelin, Western Australia - only ever existed on paper). The system of gazetting new localities changed markedly in the 1990s - prior to that they were always gazetted in the Government Gazette, now it seems to be done internally within the department now known as Landgate. Orderinchaos 05:33, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and the "localities as secret suburbs" you speak of have no legal recognition whatsoever in WA and are actively discouraged by the authorities here for mainly postal reasons (try looking up Burrendah, Brighton, Challis, Mullaloo Beach (as opposed to Mullaloo) or Dianella Heights as common ones), but also to hold up land values in the suburbs of which they are a component. The localities in question don't even appear in the Gazetteer under LOCU, they're very strict about it. Orderinchaos 05:36, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

The ACT has Swinger Hill which this template calls a locality, but it is not gazetted. Manuka doesn't seem to exist either. The rewrite looks good to start with, not sure about renaming the article though. Roke (talk) 03:29, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

New South Wales has 2,958 localities,[2] and both suburbs and localities are officially defined in the Glossary of designation values in the Geographical Names Register. However, "rural district" is not mentioned at all. Secret suburbs also exist in New South Wales. As stated in the Age article, these are neighbourhoods, not suburbs, and like WA, they have no legal recognition. Typically they refer to a housing estate name or some other common aspect that streets in the area have. I share the concerns expressed by Orderinchaos that the article has a decidedly Victorian slant. This article needs to include an Australia wide view. As for the name, it's far too generic and meaningless to be of any use. Pick a spot in the world that isn't a location. --AussieLegend (talk) 04:04, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd also point out that the subdivisions of the new "Regional Council" units in Queensland are all "suburb", regardless of the area in question. For instance, a rural area like Wamuran Basin (pop 245) is a suburb just like Strathpine (pop 9534). To muddy things even further, at least some of the regions are also divided into "districts" which area an intermediate level between suburbs and the LGA. I really think that it's not going to be possible to summarise the whole of Australia accurately here, we're going to have to go and describe the situation in each state separately. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 07:33, 4 April 2010 (UTC).

I agree with describing each state or territory separately. Subsections could be made for each in this article. Melburnian (talk) 07:48, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The situation in NSW with suburbs and localities is similar to that described by Lankveil. The two terms are often interchanged. For example, Bobs Farm, which is most definitely a locality,[3] is registered as a suburb, even though its entry in the Geographical Names Register describes it as a locality.[4] --AussieLegend (talk) 15:17, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The Victorian-centredness of what I'd written is perhaps the main reason I didn't just up-and-replace it; I don't have the time or resources to make it balanced and suitable for all of Australia, and I really don't like it when people pretend to be balanced. I would prefer that to occur because people actively contribute (discussion counts; thanks to all) to a coherent article about an Australian cultural practice that is markedly different from the practice in other countries. Apologise for the italics.

I would like to know how things work in rural Western Australia where no localities are declared. That's crucial information for the article.

Secret suburbs are discouraged from use in Victoria too. AFAIK they're discouraged everywhere. That's already in the article. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be discussed. The unofficial ones are real things to, by the way, and aside from mentioning that some of them are official and some aren't (and, later, the different state practices), I don't think the (un)official ones should be distinguished in this particular article. They're perhaps more close to concepts people in other areas will understand; but they will be different because of other distinctions (I presently live in a place called Dudweiler which in Australia would be a suburb in Saarbrücken, but in Germany its more like a "secret suburb" with its own postcode).

I also agree that the title isn't perfect, but it's not really worse than the current "suburbs and localities (Australia)". The current article and title set it up as discussing the words and the official architecture: everything but the concept. I want it to communicate the cultural practices of Australia to people from other countries, and an article title like "suburbs and localities (Australia)" seems to want to discuss the word "suburb". I begin to think "Locality (Australia)" would be fine playing on the inherent ambiguity of the word. But then you'd begin with "In Australia, locality can refer to one of three things", and that seems like a poor start to an article when they're all the same thing when looked at from another angle. (The one I'd prefer.)

In that regards, I think the concept suffers because, we don't really have a unified name for what we're trying to describe, partially because the concept has existed for much longer than the official system. (It is perhaps worth wondering why the "official name" corresponding to the concept corresponding to what I know of as "Suburb/Town" and others think of as "Suburb/Locality" is something so clinical and unusable as "locality (bounded)".)

—Felix the Cassowary 14:41, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Importance

I also disagree with the importance of this article. How are they determined? This article is about a pretty basic topic, and without a well-explained article on this topic, any article on places in Australia (be they cities, suburbs, towns or local government areas), and even the articles city, suburb, town etc. become hard to explain clearly to an American audience, if the current (American-centric) state of those articles is anything to go by. —Felix the Cassowary 15:46, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks TRS-80 [5]. —Felix the Cassowary 14:45, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

External links not working

I just want to say that the external links in the bottom of the article aren't working. Please check —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.6.205.31 (talk) 04:44, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

You're correct. All of them were dead. --AussieLegend (talk) 05:42, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

External links modified

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Determination of names of localities and suburbs

I have placed a "According to whom" template within the article because I disagree with the general statement made in respect to all of Australia; in South Australia where I live, anyone can propose a name for a locality or a suburb or the renaming of existing locality or a suburb - please refer https://www.sa.gov.au/topics/housing-property-and-land/local-government/suburb-road-and-place-names/place-name-proposals. Regards Cowdy001 (talk) 08:53, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Anyone can propose a name, but that's not the same as determining the name. Note that the link you provided says a proposal should include "the views of the council (or local authority if not in a council area)". --AussieLegend (✉) 09:26, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Same for New Zealand?

I'm just wondering. Does this term group of 'suburbs and localities' also apply to most certain place names or populated place units/areas within the nation of New Zealand? And if so, from that context, is it nearly the same as the 'suburbs and localities' within the nation of Australia? jlog3000 (talk) 21:37, 15 December 2023 (UTC)