Talk:University Circle

Reasoning for Little Italy Merger
Little Italy is a major district in Cleveland, however, for the purposes of the Census Bureau, the neighborhood isn't considered an independent district. So far as the Cleveland City Planning Commission is concerned, Little Italy is part of the University Circle Statistical Planning Area, which is what the Cleveland neighborhood template, as well as the census data in each neighborhood's respective infobox, is based on. In an attempt to make the neighborhoods of Cleveland system more standardized for Wikipedia readers (and remember, these are encyclopedia articles meant for the world, not a collection of neighborhood pride Facebook pages), it is vital that we keep the listings on the template consistent. For Little Italy to be part of this, the merger is necessary.

It is the goal of WikiProject Cleveland to sort and improve and Cleveland-related articles for Wikipedia's larger readership. This merger with the University Circle article won't lose any of the Little Italy article's original content, and in fact will connect it better to the Cleveland Neighborhood sub-project -- which only includes the larger census tracts as defined by the already mentioned City Planing Commission.

I grew up close to Murray Hill and I understand the pride the neighborhood has. It is not my intention to water down the article's content, or to disenfranchise the people who live or have lived there. Quite to the contrary, the aim of this move is to increase the awareness and thus the availability of info on Little Italy.

In case there are any who disbelieve my statements regarding the Cleveland City Planning Commission's partitioning of Statistical Planning Areas (SPA), here is a link to the webpage: http://planning.city.cleveland.oh.us/census/factsheets/cpc.html

Thank you for your input.Ryecatcher773 (talk) 03:43, 6 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I do not see why the view of either the Census Bureau or the Cleveland City Planning Commission should determine what WP should do with these entries. These are two distinct areas with two distinct characters, and have been thought of, named, and referred to in the public press as distinct neighborhoods for most of the past hundred years. The primary purpose of WP is to assist people in learning about subjects about which they seek knowledge, and those looking for Murray Hill are unlikely to begin their search by entering the term "University Circle." But if, indeed, Murray Hill 'must' be incorporated here, there's a serious problem, which is that 60% of the detailed information here is about Murray Hill, and there's very little information on any aspect of University Circle. One solution I might suggest for the time being would be a  brief entry on the 'district' with a demarcation of its boundaries, census figures, etc., with links to separate articles on these two very different places. Clevelander96 (talk) 13:57, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * In any case, it seems to me that general information about the district as a whole should come before subsections on smaller areas within the district; I've re-ordered the sections accordingly.Clevelander96 (talk) 14:15, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I understand your concerns, but a couple things to be pointed out... first, while native/resident Clevelanders (at least those of us who are East-siders) often refer to the neighborhood as 'Murray Hill' the correct name for the neighborhood is still 'Little Italy'. You will confuse people who aren't familiar with the neighborhood/area -- especially since 'Murray Hill' is a neighborhood in NYC. Second, the articles were merged because (for various reasons) Cleveland SPA info doesn't keep track of neighborhood statistics, only districts, and while the neighborhood is significant (as well as distinct from the area around the museums) there is no way to determine the statistical info. This is the only way to reflect accuracy in neighborhood data (which was one of the goals of the Cleveland WikiProject task force in the first place). Ryecatcher773 (talk) 15:10, 30 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your reply to my comments. First, though, how can we be certain that "Little Italy" is more more "correct" than "Murray Hill"? There seem, after all, to be only four or five other "Murray Hill" neighborhoods listed in Wikipedia, whereas there are more than 50 known as "Little Italy." Growing up in Cleveland I heard both names used, though probably "Murray Hill" was a bit more common.  And yes, official statistics are based on a squared-off zone which includes Little Italy (as well as a slice of  the city east of E. 105th,  and the Cedar Hill area, as well as MLK drive up to Superior Ave. -- but few in these outer areas would think of themselves as being "in" University Circle.  I don't mean to jump in if this has been hashed out already by the Cleveland WikiProject, but it seems to me that there are probably thousands of known and named neighborhoods in major U.S. cities whose boundaries are known by local convention and usage, but may not always correspond with official boundaries or census districts. So what we have now is an entry which can be tied to  statistical info very readily, but which is quite different from local, on-the-ground naming conventions.  My feeling is that the "University Circle" as a place where universities, hospitals, and other cultural institutions are located is not identical with "University Circle" the census and administrative district, and that somehow this should be addressed in the structure of the entry. Clevelander96 (talk) 18:27, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

It's always officially been 'Little Italy' -- the Murray Hill moniker (or 'The Hill') is used alot by local Italians, particularly on the East Side (like in my neighborhood), but that's colloquial not official. Murray Hill is the cross street at the main intersection, but the majority of the mainstream businesses are actually on Mayfield. If you don't want to take it from a local like myself (although after being born and raised in Cleveland for the first 20 years of my life I have since relocated to Chicago, things rarely change in Cleveland... especially in LI) check out local and Rand McNally maps that show detail of the city -- the neighborhood appears as Little Italy. There was a 'Big Italy' back in the day but it disappeared by the 40s I think. I understand what you're saying, but statistically speaking (and this is true of all the Cleveland neighborhood articles) The SPA (Statistical Planning Area) is what the city declares the borders to be, and the SPA in this case is named 'University Circle'. for our intents and purposes here on WP, that's the info we can use that citable. That's also why there are subsections in the various articles. Little Italy is part of that SPA, same as the area around the museums and Case.Ryecatcher773 (talk) 19:12, 30 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, it may be officially "Little Italy," and that's fine -- I only point out that this adds to, rather than decreasing, any possible confusion with other places in other cities. But I'm a native too -- born in University Hospitals in 1960! -- which according to this entry, means we're from the same neighborhood ;-). I also went to pre-school, and later high school, in the University Circle area. I only point out that there are many named neighborhoods in Cleveland and other cities whose boundaries are entirely "colloquial" -- and many of them have WP entries. Clevelander96 (talk) 20:51, 30 August 2013 (UTC)


 * The site www.city-data.com does offer a detailed map of Cleveland neighborhoods; it treats Little Italy and University Circle as different neighborhoods, and offers separate and extensive statistical profiles of both. www.positivelycleveland.com lists Cleveland neighborhoods and treats University Circle and Little Italy as different neighborhoods. The Images of America book series has separate volumes for Little Italy and University Circle. The online version of the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History (a go-to site for Cleveland articles on WP, surely) lists Little Italy as a separate and "well-defined" neighborhood and states that one of its boundaries is "the Case Western Reserve Campus to the west." No one of these, of course, is necessarily authoritative, but clearly one could argue from reliable sources as defined by WP that these are two separate neighborhoods, and the statistical problem can readily be solved. Why not gather some other active members of the WikiProject Cleveland group and look at these issues? Clevelander96 (talk) 21:33, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Again, I understand what you're saying, as these were concerns/issues that I too had when I edited the Little Italy article over two and a half years ago. I also am familiar with the Encyclopedia of Cleveland history, as I have used it extensively to cite facts for various Cleveland articles. When I started up WikiProject Cleveland (along with a few others who have remained pretty committed to the maintenance of Cleveland articles) one of the first orders of business was to get a handle on the neighborhood articles. The Little Italy article, for what it was, was essentially what you see in the subsection of the UC article, along with some uncited fluff -- and rather non-WP -- mainly on the mob and the feast. The model that I used in the merger followed one that the WikiProject Chicago's neighborhood project has also maintained -- it uses officially defined community areas (what Cleveland calls SPAs) and bases the articles accordingly, and in some cases where more than one distinct neighborhood exist in a 'Community Area' (e.g. Canaryville and Back of the Yards in the the New City article) the article has subsections.

Here's the rub: Little Italy in Cleveland, while significant and important to those of us who grew up in and/or around it, aside from the main drag which is mentioned is mainly a residential ethnic enclave and still relatively small -- both physically and historically -- in comparison to NYC counterparts like Mulberry Street, Bensonhurst (Brooklyn)or Boston's North End.

Yes, Corbo's has the best Cassata cakes and lemon ice in the world (uncitable and most certainly POV), and yes Presti's doughnuts are phenomenal (although I swear they were better before the expansion... but either way it is again, POV and uncitable), but aside from the substance that is already in the article, there isn't a whole lot more to write a comprehensive encyclopedia article on it -- unless you want to include notes on the number of cavatelli stands at the feast (while tasty, trivial and silly) or make the article more about the Mayfield Road mob, the history of Holy Rosary Church and the history of racial intolerance (the first two of which I think are better served in their own articles... and which already exist in some incarnation). That is why the article was merged with the SPA area for University Circle, which, as you'll also notice, is the format that the neighborhood template follows.Ryecatcher773 (talk) 15:55, 31 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the detailed reply. Yes, Little Italy is small, but that doesn't necessarily mean the WP article need stay small. It certainly looms large in most descriptions of the cultural landscape of Cleveland. One might consider it best as a part of a larger article which could include the former "Big Italy" (located along Woodland and Orange avenues from E. 9th St. to E. 40th St.). I don't have a problem with using SPA's as a guideline, but I do think that in Cleveland and elsewhere there are many named neighborhoods that don't -- officially -- exist. To use a Cleveland-area example, what about the "Coventry" neighborhood in Cleveland Heights? It certainly had, perhaps has, a distinctive vibe, but Coventry road extends far beyond the neighborhood. Should it be only a subsection in the article on "Cleveland Heights"? Or is it distinctive enough to merit a separate main entry? Or what about Doan's Corners? It certainly was a significant place (although now it's been obliterated by the ever-expanding Cleveland Clinic), but I don't think it ever was a clearly defined district in political or census terms (and yes, the WP entry on it is not quite what it should be). I'm not militating for sweeping changes, but I think this is a question that at some point will be to be discussed project-wide. Speaking of which, although I've been self-flagged as a member of WikiProject Cleveland since June of 2010, my name never appeared on the list on the page, and when I tried to edit the list I got a 'no such page exists' error, though there surely is data in it. I'd be grateful if you could add me, or let me know how I might add myself. Thanks, Clevelander96 (talk) 18:05, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

You're officially added. Click here for the page link. Welcome aboard! Ryecatcher773 (talk) 06:19, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

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