Talk:Blue Banana

(First comments)
Paris is clearly not inside the blue banana depicted in the picture, what's up with that?


 * You're right, Paris isn't part of the picture, however, they are part of the Blue Banana. The Blue Banana is a megalopolis, in which more BPP is made, which has a large concentration of people, not far from another city/ agglomeration, which also is able to be an important weight in the economy, innovation and power of the country/ entity (the Blue Banana, for example, is perhaps the most important region of the EU, most of the GDP (PPP) and GDP is made here, the de facto capital of the EU is in it's bounderies, together with the 4 biggest airports of the EU). Officialy, Paris wasn't part of the Blue Banana, in recent years, however, they are. The same counts for the West-Midlands in the UK and Turin in Italy. I will change that also. This link explains a little bit what the Blue Banana is, in a few words. Reading that, it is normal to see the Paris agglomeration as part of the Blue Banana. There was a link at the bottom of the article, but that links doesn't function anymore (they've moved) :-s I'll try to find new, other links, which will state the same thing. --Robster1983 18:56, 15 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't trust your source, unless you think a bunch of marketers, who probably cribbed their paragraph from Wikipedia anyway, have some kind of geographical repute. For further proof of this source's repute, their map of the Blue Banana misses London entirely. Matthew (talk) 12:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The whole point behind the original concept of the Blue Banana (or, rather, the European "backbone", as Brunet thought of it) was that it excluded Paris. It was an empirical critique against urban centralization in Paris. It was an empirical critique of the concept of Paris and the French Desert, in which Paris sucked all the economic energy out of the French periphery. By broadening the scope outside of France, Brunet argued that a polycentric urban network could have a great deal of vitality, which did not attack the periphery like Paris supposedly did. As I understand it, when Brunet's work was published in his organization's publication, someone (I don't know who) went with the metaphor of the blue banana, rather than a backbone. When the Blue Banana was criticized by the Germans writing for the European Community, they advocated against a Blue Banana, and for something (even) more decentralized, a "European Grape." DrMichaelWright (talk) 23:58, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

- Strasbourg???

Strasbourg clearly is in the blue banana, so I put it in the chart of cities on the page. I believe Alsace is the second richest region of France behind Ile-de-France, so Strasbourg definately contributes to the economic wealth of the banana —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.224.29.201 (talk) 00:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Arnhem/Nijmegen and Brabantse Stedenrij part of Randstad???

I can see that somebody would have a city as Breda (Westernmost city in Brabantse stedenrij) counted as being part of Randstad. But Eindhoven or Arnhem/Nijmegen? That's just a load of shite. Nijmegen is closer to Dusseldorf than it is to Amsterdam, and Krefeld is just as far as Utrecht. Why not consider Arnhem/Nijmegen to be part of Rhein-Ruhr instead. Same goes for Eindhoven, which is a metropolis in it's own right. A small one, but still, no part whatsoever of Randstad. Clint.hotvedt (talk) 20:43, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

European mega-regions
http://www.bnet.com/2346-11452_23-192833-2.html this should be in wikipedia. -Pedro (talk) 22:27, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the same. Also, basing on Richard Florida´s megaregions, we could add to the Blue Banana Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Barcelona, Valencia, Newcastle, Rome, Naples, Hamburg and Bremen. But then we shouldn´t be talking about the Blue Banana anymore; instead, we should be talking about an European Megalopolis (and we could still add Lisbon, Madrid, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Munich, Berlin, Prague, Vienna and Budapest since they would be connected to the backbone by corridors).Bangirasu (talk) 16:11, 22 July 2011

Make the table sortable please
Can someone with a better knowledge of wiki make it sortable? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.208.97.169 (talk) 22:18, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

French political context
It might be worth noting in somewhat more detail the context in which the concept was developed. The main intent was to argue to French planners that Paris, and France in general, were being bypassed in the development of Europe, since its backbone (dorsale) was now in this banana-shaped arc that largely went around France. See this for a bit on that. --Delirium (talk) 07:35, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Spanish cities in the Blue Banana
Is Barcelona in the Blue Banana? According to the map it is, bur according to the text it's not ... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.156.75.69 (talk) 15:08, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The image is wrong - the Blue Banana does not extend into Spain. If you click on the image you see the correct image. It looks as though someone changed the initial image, which changed the thumbnail, and then someone else reverted the image back to what it was originally, but the thumbnail did not revert to what it was. I have no idea myself of how to fix this. Matthew (talk) 21:44, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Just fixed the thumbnail to show the correct image. --LizardCZ (talk) 13:09, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Still; I think this can be correct too. Turin, Genoa, and Nice belong to both the Blue Bananda and the Golden Banana, so we can say the Golden Banana is an extension to the Blue Banana which would have in it Marseille, Barcelona, and Valencia.Bangirasu (talk) 16:11, 22 July 2011

Original research?
This all seems a bit dubious; the only sources are two papers, one of which is by the person who coined the term. It does not seem substantial enough to support the statements in the Criticism, Implications and Development sections of the page. If the term had any curency at the time, it doesn't seem to have any now; a google search for the term throws up a fashion store (with optional body-piercing), a football supporters club, and assorted businesses. The only hit that gives the defintion here is the WP article itself, which is never a good sign for notability. I think unless some decent sources can be found, the article needs a chainsaw taken to it, or maybe complete deletion. Moonraker12 (talk) 11:22, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree. This concept is futuristic at best and does not reflect reality. RealIK17 (talk) 15:50, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Golden Banana
Also, this page, in the See Also section, has no references at all, so I've Prodded it. Moonraker12 (talk) 11:48, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

British segement is wrong
The British segment includes rural north Wales whilst excluding South Wales, which is the most heavily populated part!Gymnophoria (talk) 18:15, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Agree. the idea of including Mid Wales in this map is laughable ElectronicsForDogs (talk) 22:05, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

discontinuous
If it's that, then it's not a (metaphorical) corridor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.189.103.145 (talk) 19:46, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Map is not in English
Needs translation from French. -- Beland (talk) 12:27, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * On it. Just give me a few days to rasterize and translate - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 19:51, 4 March 2012 (UTC)


 * ✅ -ArnoldPlaton (talk) 14:48, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

cleanup tags
The topic is valid, but it's true the article is a disaster, and apparently has been since 2011. The point of an article about the "blue banana" is not a list of cities. It's about urbanisation in Europe, the entire point of the "banana" is how France is not in it. It's about the cities that sprang up in the European miracle of the early modern period, and how France somehow just has Paris and nothing else. It's not about the "European Union", the concept dates to 1989 and concerns the history of early modern and modern Europe. --dab (𒁳) 20:02, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Why Blue
Am I missing something obvious here? Why specifically blue? The reasoning behind the color choice is not mentioned in the article at all. My best guess is due to the EU colors, but that is not immediately obvious.
 * Yes, it was necessary to explain this. I added the material from the Jacobs article to explain that it was indeed the EU flag and/or the blue collars of the Rhineland factory workers. I'm not sure I'm convinced by either very much.DrMichaelWright (talk) 05:10, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Citations Needed
I added a number of these tags, since this article has many paragraphs that are poorly sourced. I've found some good academic sources to draw on, and will be adding them in. However, there are a number of paragraphs that seem somewhat dubious. DrMichaelWright (talk) 05:17, 4 March 2018 (UTC)