Talk:Gunbarrel, Colorado

Loose Terminology
Gunbarrel has been defined by the United States Census Bureau as a census-designated place (CDP) within Boulder County, Colorado. The CDP is entirely outside the city limits of Boulder, since everything within the Boulder city limits is categorized by the Census Bureau as the city of Boulder, not the CDP of Gunbarrel.

The word Gunbarrel is also used loosely by Boulder County residents to refer to a larger neighborhood which includes the CDP, an adjacent part of northeastern Boulder, and some additional territory in unincorporated Boulder County.

Customarily, the Wikipedia article on Gunbarrel should refer strictly to the CDP, not the larger neighborhood which also includes part of Boulder. The city of Boulder has its own Wikipedia article, as does Boulder County.

However, in its current condition this article is about both the CDP and the larger neighborhood. This approach is improper and confusing.

I will be modifying the Gunbarrel article shortly, making it refer to the CDP and not any part of the city of Boulder. If someone wants to start writing articles on Boulder neighborhoods, the portion of "Gunbarrel" which is inside city limits might be one such article. Paul (talk) 08:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Gunbarrel as a distinct entity
Hello Paul and others! I'm Ucbuffalo81. I started working on the Gunbarrel, Colorado page using the CDP article as a base. I was unaware - until I read your post - about the typical convention for handling CDP's on Wikipedia. I should have created a separate page rather than walking all over the CDP page. I would certainly like to help with the correction task if you're still pursuing it. My original approach was to treat Gunbarrel as a dual-governance entity. This rationale arose with my reading of the history of Gunbarrel's development, beginning with Gunbarrel/Heatherwood, the litigation over city control of utilities, and the significant City of Boulder and County interaction on planning/zoning, transit and public safety, which continues. Within my experience, Gunbarrel residents see themselves as members of a unified and distinct community. Both the incorporated and unincorporated portions of the built-up area bear more demographic and political similarity to each other than to the Boulder city proper. There seems to be particular unity on community development and planning issues. Due to proximity of the city neighborhoods and county development, interlocking transportation and traffic management plans, and continuous mutual-aid between city and county public safety providers, I think this area deserves treatment in separate article. I'd like to hear what you think as well -- Ucbuffalo81 (talk) 05:46, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

This was my original rationale as presented on Talk:Boulder, Colorado :


 * == Anyone interested or can advise on Gunbarrel? ==


 * I'm working on the Gunbarrel, Colorado article and would like to connect it with Boulder in some way while keeping it semi-independent - Gunbarrel is both an incorporated Boulder subdivision and a built up area of Boulder County - e.g. you might live there and be a Boulder citizen but your friend in the house across the way lives in the County and is democratically represented in a totally different way. As such it's a strange governmental entity, with a contentious political history and many areas of overlap and dual control and I think this merits separation [from the City of Boulder and CDP articles]. The Boulder country club is there, as well as a residential population that differs politically (more "red") from the rest of Boulder (especially in the unincorporated areas). It is also the location of the Celestial Seasonings plant, Tyco Healthcare Valleylab, and has technical facilities belonging to Ericsson, Lockheed-Martin and Micro Motion - all but the last are in the city's areas. I'd love any help or advice. Ucbuffalo81 01:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Reversion of 07-31-2008
After opportunity for discussion, I reverted edits by Paul. This is based on an examination of content in other CDP pages and the guidelines on the Wikipedia Census-designated place primary page. Numerous other CDP pages contain information about the communities which they encompass. In particular I point to the Bostonia, California article. Gunbarrel is a special case, where the CDP, the unincorporated community, and the incorporated Boulder neighborhood are all of the same name, and all either geographically coincident or immediately proximate to one another. Separation into different articles hinders the mission of Wikipedia by creating artificial distinctions between and ignoring the complex intergovernmental relationships between what exists within the CDP and and incorporated portions. These reasons are elucidated further in the post above. I am going to work further to integrate statistics on the Boulder neighborhood and the unincorporated areas which are part of the CDP. Ucbuffalo81 (talk) 10:53, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Integration Approach

I am going to attempt to integrate the data as accessibly and seamlessly as possible, using Bostonia, California CDP as a model. I plan to refer to the pre-revert version of the Gunbarrel page and incorporate Paul's information as much as possible, with aims to avoid confusion and ambiguity which seemed to be his primary concern. Ucbuffalo81 (talk) 08:58, 7 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Bostonia is a poor example, as it is drastically against the standard format for a CDP article. Regardless of broad and unclear ideas of community boundaries, there are clear and distinct boundaries for CDPs, and as such we need to keep this separate.  If this were in the city, it wouldn't be a CDP.  Nyttend (talk) 16:28, 18 August 2008 (UTC)