Talk:North Bay (San Francisco Bay Area)

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Why is Fairfax here? Andys627 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.154.180 (talk • contribs) 15:34, 6 February 2007‎

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Solano County: Where is it?
We seem to have a problem. If Solano County is not part of the East Bay AND it is not part of the North Bay, then what part of the Bay Area is it a part of? Some editing has occurred to remove Solano and its cities of Fairfield and Vacaville without consensus and I do not believe that has served the Wiki well. This will have to be rectified. Opinions, facts... Norcalal (talk) 02:20, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Its complicated to say the least - http://www.city-data.com/forum/san-francisco/1368943-do-you-consider-solano-county-north.html Norcalal (talk) 02:24, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Can we take a step back?
The above makes me feel like I'm coming in at step 5, and I'd like to discuss steps 1-4 first, I think.


 * Solano County, California-related edits to this page within the last year
 * 17 March 2011: User:99.102.134.226 removed Solano County from the lead and put the existing content about it into its own section : "Solano County Solano County is sometimes included in the North Bay due to its location, but its culture is much more related to that of the East Bay. For this reason, Vallejo is considered a part of the East Bay, while Vacaville and Fairfield are usually considered too far north to be a part of the Bay Area."


 * 23 June 2011: User:67.188.152.65 re-added Solano County to the lead but removed the Solano County section.
 * 23 June 2011: User:Norcalal removed Solano County from the lead.
 * 23 February 2012: User:50.0.128.47 re-added Solano County to the lead.
 * 23 February 2012: User:DoriSmith (i.e., me) reverted the previous edit.
 * 13 March 2012: User:98.210.62.21 added Vallejo and Fairfield to the list of cities.
 * 13 March 2012: User:DoriSmith reverted the previous edit.


 * My thoughts
 * Now, having looked through related edits over the last twelve months… No, I wouldn't describe any of the above as "significant editing." And given that any edits adding Solano County to the lead have been reverted/deleted within a day (by two long-standing editors), it appears (or at least it appeared to me) that there was a consensus.


 * As to specifics…
 * I haven't seen anything saying that Solano County is a part of the North Bay.
 * I haven't seen anything saying that Solano County isn't part of the East Bay.
 * The article on Solano County, California describes its location as east of both Napa and Sonoma counties.
 * I haven't seen anything suggesting that Vacaville, California should be mentioned on this page since User:99.102.134.226 removed it nearly a year ago.
 * As a NB local, I have to say, I've never heard anyone mention Solano County as part of the region.


 * 'TL;DR
 * I'm open to re-adding mention of Solano County to this article if there is a solid reference saying it's in the North Bay. And if that's the case, corresponding content should be added to the Solano County article at the same time. But until then, I think the consensus version is fine. Dori ☾Talk ⁘ Contribs☽ 04:46, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The question still exists though and there was NO CONSENSUS as no formal discussion occurred. Through the article there are references to the Carquinez bridge and in photos. Partial removal is messy and not at all the result of consensus. IF Solano County is not part of the North Bay then which part of the Bay Area is it? At least until one arrives at Vacaville, at least parts of the county belong in one or more areas of the Bay, probably the North Bay. It may be that it is the East Bay. My comment still stands that it HAS to be part of one of the areas and that we need to make sure it is listed in at least one area. This is to make sure the encyclopedia is thorough. No other goal or agenda here. I do not agree that it must be removed until there is a solid reference saying it is in the North Bay. The converse is more true. Until it is proven to NOT be in the North Bay then it must stay. My own previous edit was in error. Just because it may be a proverbial "red-headed step-child" is not grounds to remove it, even though personally I would like it to be. Norcalal (talk) 17:08, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I searched for the term "Solano" coupled with an either/or logic gate that would return Google Books results for both "East Bay" and "North Bay". I thought I would have to sort through a few East Bay entries and weigh them against North Bay entries which I expected would be stronger. However, all the high-quality book sources placed Solano squarely in the North Bay, none in the East Bay.
 * The California Water Plan, page 54. "The North Bay Group embraces those portions of Marin, Sonoma, Napa, and Solano Counties draining into San Francisco, Bodega, Tomales, San Pablo, and Suisun Bays. It reaches from the Pacific Ocean on the west to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta on the east, and extends north to the drainage divides defining the Sacramento Valley and the Russian River Basin."
 * "Solano County", by Judy Irvin, chapter VI in Susan Dinkelspiel Cerny's An Architectural Guidebook to San Francisco and the Bay Area. Irvin casually includes Solano in the North Bay.
 * Integrated Land Use and Environmental Models: A Survey of Current Applications and Research, page 84. Springer, 2003. "The North Bay Area: The north San Francisco Bay Area includes Marin, Sonoma, Napa, and Solano counties."

I think we should say absolutely that Solano is a North Bay Area county. I have no opinion about various attitudes that have been expressed about Vallejo or other cities feeling like they are culturally more East Bay than North Bay. The county as a whole is North Bay. Binksternet (talk) 19:33, 14 March 2012 (UTC)


 * To the extent that North Bay means anything, I think that Solano is part of it. Until the Marin County Athletic League was created in the 1950s, Vallejo High School was in the old North Bay League, competing in football, baseball, and basketball against high schools in Marin, Sonoma, and Napa Counties. The North Bay Aqueduct serves Napa and Solano Counties.  ABAG includes Solano County in it's discussion of the North Bay and the discussion about how different the land use patterns are in the North Bay clearly apply to Solano County (more rural and agricultural). The eastern half of Solano County is outside the boundaries of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Control Board, because it drains to the Sacramento River instead of directly to the Bay or Delta; however the northern two-thirds of Sonoma County are also outside the Board's boundaries, since it drains directly to the Pacific, while the southern portion of Santa Clara County is also excluded since it drains to Monterey Bay. The Regional Board includes Solano County in its "Northeast Bay Section", along with Marin, Sonoma, and Napa Counties, while Contra Costa, Alameda, and Santa Clara Counties are in its "Southeast Bay Section." (This is just an org chart and staff split, so I don't give it a lot of weight, but I think a lot of agencies tend to split their organizations between Solano and Contra Costa, rather than between Solano and the rest of the North Bay.) Eastern Solano and northern Sonoma are also outside the boundaries of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, although the lines aren't exactly the same; the portion of Solano County in the District is in it's North Counties Reporting Zone for air quality reporting.--Hjal (talk) 21:05, 14 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I did more research today, and ended up adding a section on the debate to the Solano County, California article. There definitely is no easy answer on this one; I found solid sourcing that, variously, says it's in the North Bay, the East Bay, and not in the Bay Area at all. Here and now, I'm leaning towards adding a section something like the one . Dori ☾Talk ⁘ Contribs☽ 00:49, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * In my search I saw sources like the ones you brought to the article to 'prove' East Bay affiliation, but those sorts of sources were not what I would call the best sources. Our top sources are scholarly studies and government studies. Instead, you brought articles from the San Francisco Business Times, the Lodi News-Sentinel, and a piece by reporter John Alston in ABC7 news; all of which casually assume Solano to be in the East Bay rather than devoting their full attention to the question. These are not scholarly studies, or governmental studies. They are just a few of the various bits of 'noise' down at the bottom of the sources. Yes, there is confusion for some people regarding which region Solano falls in, but not at the top, not for policy makers and geographers. We should take our encyclopedia role seriously and tell the reader in the lead section that the county is in the North Bay, and then in the article body we can give more detail, including the confusion in some lesser sources. Binksternet (talk) 02:08, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't believe that it's as cut-and-dried as you say it is. For instance, until you just removed it, the Solano County, California article had said that it's in the Bay-Delta region. And when you removed the statement about some of the county being in the Central Valley, the citation you removed was to a web site run by the State of California (see map). And since when are newspapers not considered reliable sources? Dori ☾Talk ⁘ Contribs☽ 03:49, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Something being in the article for a long time is not an argument for keeping it. As you point out, RyanLoney added the bit about Bay-Delta region but he did not support it with a cite. Note that parts of Solano County being in the Bay-Delta region does not take away those parts from being in the North Bay—there is overlap because the one is defined by water flow and the other by county boundaries.
 * The visitcalifornia.com website makes a bunch of its own groupings, unrelated to other classifications. For instance, they don't count the cities of Sonoma, Petaluma and Santa Rosa as part of the SF Bay Area, even though they count Napa Valley all the way up to Calistoga and beyond. Clearly, they are marching to their own drummer, rearranging regions based on some concept of what the tourist might want to see. Certainly, I would count the California tourist board as less of a source than land use studies or planning agency documents.
 * Yes, news agencies are reliable sources. All of our reliable sources can be placed roughly on a continuum of very reliable at one end, and not so reliable at the other. The best possible sources are scholarly studies. The Guhathakurta book I used is one such source: Integrated Land Use and Environmental Models: A Survey of Current Applications and Research, written by Subhrajit Guhathakurta and the Herberger Center for Design Excellence. Guhathakurta is currently a professor of City and Regional Planning, College of Architecture, Georgia Tech. He is Director of the Georgia Tech Center for Geographic Information Systems. At the time the book was written he was Associate Professor in the School of Planning and Landscape Architecture at Arizona State University. A geography, architecture and urban planning professor is well placed to judge what region Solano County is in. Binksternet (talk) 04:28, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Nice—except for the fact that Guhathakurta didn't write that—Landis and Reilly did (Guhathakurta was the book's editor). And for some reason, you reverted my edit correcting your mistake. I've fixed that again. While it's true that some reliable sources are more reliable than others, it helps if we have accurate reports on who those sources are and what they said. Dori ☾Talk ⁘ Contribs☽ 05:12, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry for changing your correction to the book cite. I did not (and still don't) see the chapter authors listed in my Google book search. I will accept that you have the proper information. Binksternet (talk) 14:09, 15 March 2012 (UTC)