Talk:Borough of Luton

Why was this split from the Luton article
Why was this split from the Luton article? The text is confusing, half seems to be about the Luton/Dunstable Urban Area instead of the borough of Luton. It also mentions adjacent villages. There arent any in the borough to my knowledge. There are no parishes in the Borough of Luton. Eopsid (talk) 17:22, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Proposed merge
This article just duplicates information in Luton Borough Council, I think it should be merged into that one. I would also argue that Luton's borough is also not distinct from the town itself. It doesnt contain any separate civil parishes and the two articles were seperate until very recently. But instead of merging into Luton it'd be better to merge to the council because all the information here also pertains to the council. Eopsid (talk) 16:23, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd be fine with merging but I'd note that normally when the division and settlement are combined but the council has a separate article the division title normally goes to the settlement thus redirect to Luton even if most of the text goes into the council article (which is what I think is being proposed).  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 17:00, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah I agree with that. Eopsid (talk) 20:50, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * And if there is a consensus to keep the borough article I'd support merging the council article to the borough article. This isn't like Darlington where we did merge the council to the borough since the borough met none (or only 1) of the criteria to be combined while Luton appears to meet all.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 16:13, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree with C,S. Merge but Council into Borough not vice versa. (BTW, was I the only one surprised to find that the UA does not include Dunstable and Hockliffe. How did that happen? It makes no sense unless party politics.) --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:53, 1 May 2022 (UTC)
 * TMK, there are no settlements in the Borough which are distinct from Luton's urban sprawl, and it is completely unparished, so I think it is redundant to have separate articles for Luton and its borough (and when most of the info in the latter article is already present in Luton Borough Council, and for uniformity sake, there is no separate article for, e.g., Reading's borough from the town itself, which is essentially in the same position as Luton). I support a merge, but from the Borough article to the Council article, as we don't have, say, the Borough of Milton Keynes, and Milton Keynes Council all in one (the former is about the geographic area controlled by the LA, and its demographics and settlements, etc, and the latter is about the LA itself, and the politics of the Council). Side note, JMF you're not alone: I used to think that Dunstable was in the Luton UA for some reason. I guess we all learn someday about the flawed logic of geography vis-à-vis politics. Anonymous MK2006 (talk) 20:33, 1 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I think there was a plan to merge South Bedfordshire and Luton when Bedfordshire went unitary. So Dunstable could have ended up in the Borough of Luton. But it never happened probably because as you said party politics neither safe Labour Luton nor safe Tory South Beds wanted a merge. Eopsid (talk) 20:41, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I have a guilty suspicion that my original support for BoL to exist as a separate article may well have been founded on the erroneous belief that the Borough > BUA > historical Luton boundary (so including Dunstable and Hockliffe). My logic was unassailable. Apart from the false premises, obviously. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:06, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Milton Keynes urban area, and Luton and Dunstable urban area - there is a great difference with the wording. The former is concretely focused on one settlement, whereas the second is focused on many, hence the "and." Luton and Dunstable can easily be distinguished as two separate settlements as although they are contiguous, there are clear political differences (the former is a UA itself whereas the latter is part of a separate, much larger and markedly rural UA), in addition to the fact that both have co-existed for centuries, and have experienced vastly different demographic changes and population growth rates. On the contrary, Milton Keynes and, e.g., Newport Pagnell cannot be easily distinguished as the political, geographical and demographical aspects are almost perfectly aligned, in addition to the fact that the 1967 MK designated area already included four pre-existing towns, and Newport Pagnell happened to follow the same growth trends as, say, Bletchley, which is why it is near impossible for most people to distinguish between Bletchley and Newport Pagnell with regards to MK, and that is fine. In summary, from my perspective, Newport Pagnell can be considered to be part of MK just like Bletchley is, because MK was designed to have fluid boundaries, and its growth means that we shouldn't be nitpicking over the fact that the contiguous area (and the BUA) slithers outside the now archaic 1967 boundary. In contrast, Luton is much older and has grown in a vastly different way to MK (e.g. it was never intended to have any pre-existing towns within its boundary), and Dunstable and its people have developed a clearly distinct identity, so although there is certainly a contiguous urban area, Luton and Dunstable are for now two brothers from different mothers, until, e.g., the latter for some reason gets put into the Borough of the former. Anonymous MK2006 (talk) 18:24, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Leighton Buzzard and Linslade? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:33, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
 * These are two constituent market towns united under one town council, though I would presume that residents would more strongly identify with only one or the other (most of the roads signs I've seen point to LB and Linslade separately, kind of like how they point to Brighton and Hove separately, despite being united under one UA with city status). Nevertheless, it depends how you slice it: both LB and Linslade on their own, and the conjoined civil parish meet some sort of legal criteria to be considered a town. BUAs/metro areas on the other hand are only really noticeable if the settlements share a single political entity (like N Pagnell and the rest of the Milton Keynes BUA being in the Borough of Milton Keynes under MK Council), or the main settlement has overwhelming influence over the area through, e.g., population (e.g. the Liverpool City Region and the Liverpool Urban Area).
 * Well I guess the Brighton and Hove UA could be moved to The City of Brighton and Hove and "Brighton and Hove" redirected to Brighton and Hove built-up area however currently the BUASD is "Brighton and Hove" so it may be better to keep the "Brighton and Hove" article for the UA/BUASD and the "Brighton and Hove built-up area" there.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 20:50, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

To post on here, I recently made a borough article for Borough of Slough and that reason is because Slough borough contains Langley which is classed as a town and it has certain areas of note as well as a big urban area with Burnham in Buckinghamshire etc...that is notable and can be seperate as it has two towns. Luton is one whole settlement like Tamworth and contains no worries civil parishes. That's not to say Langley is a civil parish but as it is a town of its own in Slough. It offers another notable settlement to Slough to become a borough article it's not like Reading which has no real settlements DragonofBatley (talk) 09:37, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

The merge is now complete Eopsid (talk) 17:44, 20 May 2022 (UTC)