Talk:Cantons of Costa Rica

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Redirect discussion from List of cities in Costa Rica
I'm wondering if this list should be redirected to Cantons of Costa Rica. Costa Rica does not have "cities" but has cantons and districts. It's like saying "provinces" for the USA which would surely get redirected to "states" or deleted outright. Also, the list of "cities" is both outdated by almost 20 years and incomplete (since there are no official "list of cities" since there are no official cities, the only source must be OR, or some third party like citypopulations.de). This list runs afoul of WP:OR, since it is an arbitrary list from a 3rd party website. I tried to redirect but was reverted, so I will ask if anyone does not think this list is original research. Mattximus (talk) 16:28, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree and will work on that in the future. By the División Territorial Administrativa the head district of each canton is awarded automatically the status of city, irregardless of population density or other factors, which is kind of ridiculous for some districts, but well.... is the official designation, but with the exception of San José canton, where the whole canton except a small section in a district, is identified as a city (I have added that information this week to both English and Spanish wikis, somebody even draw up map limits according to imaginary criteria!). This is something that is seldom known, but that should be included in Wikipedia ASAP. This list of cities is a disaster, seems like an opinionated list by somebody's very personal criteria for city.  Roqz (talk) 03:27, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * That is interesting, and I agree, but would you agree to a redirect to the much better Cantons of Costa Rica, which at the very least is more complete and up to date? It seems like a waste of time to duplicate efforts on this page and the other page. Mattximus (talk) 16:28, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree on that, we can safely redirect this page there and what can be done is to add a column for 'head district (city)' or the like in the main table of that article, and add each district as per the División Territorial Administrativa. Also, I need to check on the current legal status of 'provincial capital', I think those were deprecated in the 1990s when the Gobernador Provincial (province major?) were eliminated, I think that not even for ceremonial purposes there is a capital of the province figure at the moment, but the title still lingers in the collective imagination, I'm not really sure.  Nowadays provinces as administrative division are an historic/social-identity relic, it now starts at the canton level, so there is no point in a capital for a province, that would be the logical way to go... I'll ask some lawyer friends about that, the figure might still exist after all. Roqz (talk) 16:59, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * This juridical opinion document of 2013, on whether the municipalities can ask for a liquor license (hehe!), states that the province capital was where, until 1998 when eliminated, the province governor resided or the canton considered as such due to population, social, economic or historical reasons. No legal framework or designation exists, and therefore the Procuraduría de la República (country general attorney) is in the impossibility to emit criteria on what (or which) a provincial or cantonal capital is. Seems that those figures are just collective opinions after all? Roqz (talk) 17:32, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Sounds good! Looking at the individual pages, it appears the word "Canton capital" is used instead of "head district (city)", would that be a suitable column header? Mattximus (talk) 17:42, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure about using the term canton capital, seems that administrative/head city would be proper term, and each individual page should be updated for that nomenclature/definition as well (That's part of what I was talking about "will be working on that!" hehe). A lawyer friend just replied, that in fact the División Territorial Administrativa (DTA) does still as of 2019 assign a province capital as the "city which is in the first canton of the province". and in the same glossary there is the city definition for Costa Rica, a rough translation: City: Urban area, seat of the more relevant political and administrative authorities, that when by a canton has been created by an approved law, will hold the administrative control of the whole canton territory (Law 4366, Administrative Territorial Division, of 1969). The city title will be awarded only to the administrative centers of the cantons, by means of where the municipality is located, therefore the only requisite to declare a territory as a city, is that this be a political-administrative center with those characteristics. So maybe just adding a 'City' column would be enough? With a proper paragraph and reference to the current DTA law (N°41548-MGP, 28 January 2019). I will have a coffee with my friend to settle this, and then will work toward updating the 82 canton pages with this information. Phew!  BTW, you can check the above PDF and look for "Ciudad" in each canton to add to this column and the proper link to the district is in List of districts of Costa Rica, where by postal code maybe each of the codes ending in ---01 would be the head city. But needs to be corroborated with the DTA. Roqz (talk) 18:51, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh, just noticed that by those legal definitions, the green shaded province capital will need to be the district/head-city in the city column as well! It also works in the special case of San José, that it has its seat city made up by all the districts, I added that link to the column too. I think the shade can be moved there as well. Roqz (talk) 19:07, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * That sounds good as well. I think we can just directly quote that passage that you wrote about the definition of city in the body of the text to explain. Let's make any changes to the table here, then when we redirect the table will be complete. Mattximus (talk) 13:25, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

I finished filling up the table, there are four things to take into account: Great work! Roqz (talk) 19:46, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Just as San José city that is made up by several districts, Puntarenas city and Cartago city have those conditions, the target articles are not very clear on that, I tried to fix up Puntarenas, but I think a new Puntarenas (district) is required just for the district. Cartago is made up of two districts with different names, so, is already done. I updated Administrative_divisions_of_Costa_Rica with the details.
 * In the table, Valverde Vega canton required to be updated to Sarchí, the change in name is recent. Done!
 * There are three "cities" that are not whole districts... The DTA assigns the cities to the renown suburban area of the district and not the whole district... My lawyer friend will look into that next week. Our motivation is that we have children of school age in the family and they are submitting completely wrong homework using Wikipedia, I noticed that in a presentation, so, here we are.
 * Noticed a few missing diacritics in the list of districts and their pages, will move those to the proper name.
 * Wow, this is great! I was going to finish the list myself but found you had completed it. I think it's safe to move to the main page, then redirect this one. I will copy over this discussion as well. I think you brought up some great points that we should also incorporate into the lead of the article as well. Mattximus (talk) 13:41, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Roqz I reworded your paragraph, I hope it's an improvement. Is there anything else we can add to that section? Also do you know when the next Costa Rica census will take place? Our population figures are quite old, but I do not like using estimates (I don't find them encyclopedic, when a country conducts official censuses). Mattximus (talk) 16:25, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Mattximus Thanks, the paragraph reads fine. After I know what to do about the other three cities-not-whole-districts then we can add something to that paragraph or to the Administrative divisions of Costa Rica article (oh, I think that link should be in the paragraph to expand on the definition..?) Next census is in 2021. Almost there! Roqz (talk) 16:31, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Nice! I will work on the template table for next census and post it here in the talk page so it’s ready to go next year. Mattximus (talk) 20:21, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi again! I have somewhat normalized the Districts of Costa Rica article table with this one of cantons, I used the table here as reference, please check it out! I will take a wikiholiday for a while, I did a lot of work on districts and cantons of Costa Rica recently, in both English and Español wikipedias. I just needed to update the postal codes and district tables, and that was it! Thanks a lot for your efforts on Costa Rica articles! Regarding the next census, it is still on track for 2021 with final results to be published in 2022. The INEC released a project web page last month: CENSO 2021 --Roqz (talk) 20:58, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

2021... 2022... 2023? census
Just a heads up; the 2021 census was delayed to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is quite possible that it will be delayed again due to budget cuts, either case, there will be no new data before 2023-24. I have been updating the tables in eswiki (es:Anexo:Distritos de Costa Rica, es:Anexo:Cantones de Costa Rica) with 2022 population estimates, it is what it is. The estimated data (and all previously applicable census' data) is also already available for the 7 provinces, 82 cantons, 489 districts in Wikidata (in eswiki it is quite comfortable to use the Infobox as it gets updated automatically, however I still need to manually do the change for it to happen in most of cantons and provinces, seems that will be my first wikiproject this year). Would like to do the same for enwiki, but seems Infobox-Wikidata integration is not well regarded here? --Roqz (talk) 15:06, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't think census estimates is an appropriate thing to include in this list or even individual canton pages (unless as an aside to the official census counts). Estimates are not encyclopedic and should only be used if there is no other option. It's unfortunate the new data is delayed but that is reality, so we just have to wait for the new data next year. At that point let's delete the old 2000 census column because it would be out of date. Mattximus (talk) 17:01, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
 * PS I do like the idea of infobox integration with wikidata, but only for official census counts. I don't know how it works but it would be very interesting to try! Mattximus (talk) 17:03, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with the census data to be the only one presented in these tables or infoboxes, I would keep it like that here in enwiki, however in eswiki there is a mix of estimates and census across the site, as other editors eventually update one place or the other with the current year and only that place and that time... So it is easy to see any year between 2011 and 2022 all over the place. So, I just updated everything to 2022 and be done with it, however I started with census data only, but got fed up of of doing reverts and went with the 'consensus'. In eswiki the Infobox automatically fills the fields that have wikidata entries (population, elevation, area, autocalc density, flag, coat of arms, ...), but to use Wikidata here, I just made a demo at Santa Bárbara (canton) with the preferred rank (2022 estimate) and then reset to 2011 with wikidata, you can set it to the former manual input values if you want. I think using wikidata like that is not encouraged here, but forgot where I read that... --Roqz (talk) 01:03, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes I like how you included the estimate in the infobox for Santa Bárbara, that format makes sense. And the wikidata system you used works well. I wonder, does it save you time to upload the census/estimate data to wikidata instead of just manually typing them in? Mattximus (talk) 14:38, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I uploaded the provinces (7), cantons (82+1) and districts (489) data for all the available census (1864 onwards) and the 2021 and 2022 estimates using a custom Python script that leverages the pywikibot tool, takes a few minutes each year, so when I uploaded the 2022 data and set it as preferred, all the districts got updated automatically as well in eswiki, and my current project is to get it ready for cantons and provinces, totally worth it! However, as set in that example in enwiki, it would work only with estimates and should be updated manually for every census... Guess it would be a nice ride for ~10 years, and then bam, manual work once a decade? I think it is possible to create a tool using pywikibot that replaces those entries, could give it a shot after I finish a couple of projects in eswiki. And of course, by centralizing the values in Wikidata, any language wiki that uses that will be synchronized, I think italian is another one that uses it for the infoboxes. --Roqz (talk) 14:53, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
 * That is very cool, I don't think you will have any pushback for implementing that for Cantons of Costa Rica infoboxes, so few people update them that your script will significantly improve these pages! Seeing as how it's also more efficient, I strongly support it! Is there a technical reason it can't be done also with census figures? There will be new figures hopefully next year. And also I wonder if your wikidata items for historic census figures can be used to make automated historical population tables? Mattximus (talk) 16:29, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the support! I guess for the census figures a small template or a more sophisticated query can be implemented that get the most recent census figure or something like that, it can be done. As for the population tables, of course it can be done! I already did that! In the eswiki equivalent article es:Cantón de Santa Bárbara you can see a template/plantilla I created just for that, just a single line in the article, an update when we have new census, and kaboom, 570+ articles updated automatically. In english I copied the USA population table template for Costa Rica, and it was a naive move, as entries must be added individually and there was a generic template for that, but, can be repurposed/rewritten here to query Wikidata in the future. :) --Roqz (talk) 18:53, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Local Government
I'm not sure if this sentence is true given the rest of the article:

"Cantons are the only administrative division in Costa Rica that possess local government in the form of municipalities."

Both the "Political structure" sections and the articles on the Local government in Costa Rica mention that districts have their own elected councils and executives, unless I'm understanding this incorrectly. If that is the case, this sentence needs to be removed. It very much appears that there are, in fact, two levels of local government. And in fact, I'd say the district level is what most would consider "local government" while the canton government is more of a regional/county-level government. But that's neither here or there. --Criticalthinker (talk) 09:12, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Only the cantons have municipalities, and there are eight special district councils for districts far away from the canton's municipality/city-center with executive power. The remaining district level deliberative body (síndicos, regidor) meets once a month and then the canton's mayor acts on behalf of those. They don't have executive power, only through the canton's mayor. The article surely can be expanded from the Spanish one, there is missing information. --Roqz (talk) 19:23, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Vandalism by IP
@Mattximus thanks for reviewing my change, but please re-check the dates, I was reverting to your last edit as I noticed a lot of edit by that IP in other Costa Rica articles, but your change is different to the last stable edit (by @RoboQwezt0x7CB) before all the arbitrary changes by the now-blocked IP user. Thanks! FolivoraVirides (talk) 19:20, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Update to 2022
I've updated the article to, among other, smaller things, include information from the latest population estimate, done in 2022 and published in 2023. This estimate was supposed to be our decennial census, but the COVID-19 pandemic ruined the process and the National Institute of Statistic and Census (INEC) decided to publish it under the name of "estimate" instead, rather than as a census. It's not ideal, but the 2011 data is woefully out of date and it's not going to get any better as time passes. Most cantons have grown by at least 15% and the entire country by 17% (or almost 750K people)! Not even the area of the cantons is correct, as new data from the National Greographic Institute (IGN) shows that CR is actually 70km2 bigger than what was thought, according to the estimate's PDF source.

I also wanted to keep the column for the year 2000, but it ended up overcrowding the table, so I scrapped it. If anyone thinks its worth it to keep the 2000 data and has a good way of readding it without overwhelming the reader, go ahead. Rubýñ  (Talk) 00:56, 22 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the update Rubýñ . While I see your reasoning, I would strongly opposite putting up estimates, which are often wildly inaccurate and are not encyclopedic unless there is no census data at all. For this, it appears the INEGI website calls the 2022 data a census? Was it not a real one? Did they cancel the 11th census? If they did replace the 11th census with this one, I could see a good argument for keeping it.
 * At the very least I think we should maintain the canton in the first column and province in the original column, because this is a list of cantons, not provinces. But I do agree with you that the 2000 data should be removed if the 2022 is indeed census data. That would be way too many columns. Mattximus (talk) 23:38, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree. Ideally, the source would be a census and not an estimate. However, the 2022 census did take place (from June to September). What happened was that the INEC (assuming that by INEGI you mean INEC, because INEGI is Mexican) failed to survey almost 40% (~695k) of the country's households, either because they didn't visit them, the occupants refused to be surveyed, or they couldn't get a survey, so they used the partial census data, administrative records (like voters, births, deaths, etc.), and a Bayesian model to make the estimation. All this is according to the PDF publication of the estimate and a dedicated 36-page document explaining their methodology.I'm not a statistician nor do I have much knowledge in statistics and demographics, so I won't pretend to know what a Bayesian model is, let alone be able to judge the quality of the work they did. I honestly couldn't read through the documents I sent because I don't understand them (specially the second one). There's a valid argument to be made against this estimate but, again, 13 year-old data isn't exactly up to date, and censuses are scheduled to happen every ten years, so probably we'll have to wait until sometime in the 2030s for the next one, which seems like way too long into the future, in my opinion.This estimate is most likely very inaccurate, but its the most recent data we have and, more importantly, it's NOT a projection made using old data. It's an attempt at filling in the blanks from a partial census. As a compromise, I can add a label that clearly states that the 2022 data is an estimation made from partial census data, the same way the Spanish version of this list does it, which has had an estimation column for 3 years, first with 2021 estimates, then 2022 (projected from 2011 data), and then 2022 again with the source I used here.I will move the provinces back to where they were. Rubýñ  (Talk) 01:15, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation. I think you are correct then, but I do think we should make a note on the 2022 data indicating exactly what you just wrote just so people know the data is a bit wonky, do you have a source for your comments? I used to teach statistics, but without reading the document, Bayesian stats refers to using priors (which in this case might be old census data) to make probabilistic predictions. It's a good method though. Mattximus (talk) 23:45, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
 * All of what I said is sourced by the two PDFs that I linked. They're directly from the INEC, so they're completely in Spanish. I hope that's not a problem for you. If you want details on the way they made the estimations, you'll want to read the second PDF (Estimación de Población y Vivienda 2022: Metodología). It has formulas, graphs, tables, lots of explanatory paragraphs, the whole thing. None of it I understand, but I'm sure you will have a better time with it, having taught statistics. The first PDF is about the results themselves.I don't have a source for the "censuses take place every ten years" thing, it's just that the last three censuses have happened ~10 years from each other (2000, 2011, 2022 which was initially scheduled for 2020). Rubýñ  (Talk) 16:22, 24 April 2024 (UTC)