Talk:Wellington/Archive 2

Wellington City or Wellington Metropolitan Area?
This article seems to me to be confused as to whether it is really meant to be about the Wellington Metropolitan Area or about Wellington city.

The title merely says "Wellington", and it is not clarified to which is directed to within the first paragraph.

In the info box it lists the mayor, flag & coat of arms for the Wellington City Council. These do not apply to the other cities in the Wellington Metropolitan Area, with Porirua, Lower Hutt & Upper Hutt each having their own mayors, flags & coat of arms. There is no collective local body or mayor representing the whole of the Wellington Metropolitan area.

As such, the inclusion of these in the info box seem to imply that the page is directed to Wellington City.

However, the same info box also lists Porirua, Lower Hutt & Upper Hutt as parts of "Wellington", along with including electorates & MPs that cover these areas but not that of Wellington City.

Similar confusion appears in the article itself. For example, while the 3rd paragraph of the introduction mentions Pātaka (in Porirua) and the Dowse (in Lower Hutt), in the "Museums and cultural institutions" only institutions within Wellington city are mentioned. Further, almost all, if not all (a couple places I don't recognise), of the photographs in the article are of places in Wellington city.

I therefore think it would probably be better if the information on this page was split into two separate appropriately named pages - one for the "Wellington Metropolitan Area", and one for "Wellington City".

Potentially any "Wellington City" page could be merged with the already existing Wellington City Council page, unless having a separate page for that is considered useful. (I note that none of Porirua, Lower Hutt or Upper Hutt appear to have separate pages for their councils)

Nāku noa, nā

--Radicuil (talk) 11:04, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
 * , thanks for bringing that up. The scope should be for the city. Feel free to clarify that in the lead and remove content that is out of scope. If editors want a further article for the metropolitan area they can write one.  Schwede 66  16:58, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, Radicuil, that is well observed. The problem you highlight goes well beyond Wellington or even New Zealand. A major cause of this is the inability to define a city's boundaries which makes it difficult to write about the city. A local government area can, however, be defined and if that LG area has the same name as the city the easy trap to fall in to is to define the city as the LG area. Just consider, for example, if the Wellington local government area was called Remutaka Council, and then consider if the wiki article would be written in exactly the same way: I doubt it. The best solution I have come up with is for Wikipedia articles about places to incorporate a much clearer section on local government. Local govt usually gets squeezed in somewhere in the history section or comprises a large table of all the current local councillors and mayor. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:01, 5 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm still relatively new to editing so I'm not 100% confident about making all the necessary changes myself, but I can try to give it a go --Radicuil (talk) 09:30, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
 * You can't break the 'pedia! If you are unsure about anything, put a note in the edit summary and somebody will check your edit. Or ask here.  Schwede 66  09:47, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

So, I had a go. I'm sure it's not perfect and that I've probably missed some stuff. Hopefully other people can also have a go at tidying some of it up. As I noted on my edit, for now I have just moved some of the stuff about the wider metropolitan area into it's own section. --Radicuil (talk) 12:15, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I see there is alot going on here - I suspect trying to have one article that covers both Wellington City and Wellington in general (unfortunately not the same as the Region as that is bigger than what is mostly considered Wellington) is bound to cause issues. The idea of splitting the article into one just for the City named Wellington and one for the constituent cities that make up Wellington is to my mind very sound. Andrewgprout (talk) 01:38, 9 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm late to this party but I disagree entirely...I've layed out some points surrounding this at the bottom of the page. Aubernas (talk) 14:42, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

intl- vs national-English usage
Every dialect (of English — the only language I can responsibly comment on) has equally valid authority to establish its own dialectal-style standard, and I support that (inevitable!) pattern. I edited a section for style issues, and followed a principle that I think is sound and long established here (en:wp): that there is de facto a rough standard of intl-English usage, whether best described as — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:199:C201:FD70:0:0:0:3D80 (talk) 02:35, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Wellington - second biggest city?
My concern is that Wellington is being misrepresented in this article as being simply its urban area of 215,000 rather than its metro area of 440,000. This doesn’t just put it behind Christchurch as New Zealand’s third smallest, but leaves out over half of the city’s de facto population. This just isn’t accurate, and I think any Wellingtonian would share my concern that ignoring this population misleads the reader. Christchurch may be the second-largest urban area, but I strongly believe that the second largest “city” is Wellington, and it would distort the article to say that it isn’t. The truth is simply that Lower Hutt, Porirua and Upper Hutt are parts of Wellington. While they may be cities in their own right, that’s just a matter of there being four city councils rather than To my understanding the catalyst for the relegating of Wellington from second to third largest city came with the publication of this article in Stuff in 2020. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/118802046/christchurch-is-new-zealands-second-city-deal-with-it With its merits notwithstanding this article is, objectively speaking, quite passive aggressive, and the opinion of just one person. While she does make a valid point that the systems we use to measure city size have changed- I’m not denying that Christchurch is LEGALLY the second biggest city- her claims that Porirua, Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt are “large and distinctive cities in their own right” seems utterly bogus to me. I’ve lived here my entire life, and have friends and family spread out across each of these subdivisions. But I have never thought that I’m going to a different city when I travel from Island Bay to Petone, from Wallaceville to Tītahi Bay, from Churton Park to Tōtara Park…I just feel like I’m in Wellington. These borders are contiguous, and are bound by a shared community, culture and commuter network be it bus, train or road. I can honestly say I’ve never met anyone from the Hutt or Porirua who feels like they aren’t a Wellingtonian, or that Wellington is some other city that doesn’t affect them. I don’t go to the Dowse thinking I’m on holiday in a different town, or swim in a different city at Eastbourne. The notion of this being what Wikipedia is saying is honestly quite bizarre to me. I can find multiple sources saying Wellington’s population is its metro area, or simply not making a distinction between Wellington and the Hutt of Porirua. Here are just a few of them; https://www.fernhillmotorlodge.co.nz/location/ https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/21962/wellington/population https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/wellington-population The official Stats NZ measurement refers to Wellington CITY’S population as being 215,000, emphasing the council area rather than the metro area itself. This is further proof that Wellington City is not considered to be all of Wellington, and that the metro area is the most accurate way of measuring population. https://www.stats.govt.nz/tools/2018-census-place-summaries/wellington-city Put simply, Wellington is a city defined by its metropolitan area, not its technical urban area. It is just governed by four councils, in the same wast Sydney is governed by 30 LGAs; on the city’s Wikipedia page, Sydney’s population is indeed measured by the Greater Metro area size. With Birmingham, it itself has the third-largest urban area, but is defined as the second-largest city nonetheless; “It is the second-largest city, second-largest metropolitan area and third-largest urban area.” I think Wellington suits this standard as well. It’s ranked as the second highest New Zealand city by the Globalisation and World Cities Research Network; Auckland is a Beta+ city, Wellington is a Gamma city, while Christchurch barely makes the GAWC list as a Sufficiency city. Seeing as Wellington clearly has the population as a boon for the list, why would we continue to say it is smaller than Christchurch rather than having a concise, nuanced explanation like Birmingham does? Or sum it up as the sum of its large, diverse and connected metropolitan area like Sydney? I urge fellow editors to help change the wording for this. It’s just too misleading otherwise. Thank you for your attention :) Aubernas (talk) 14:24, 21 April 2022 (UTC)


 * For my two cents, let me just start off by saying that I am personally disinterested as to whether Wellington is considered the 2nd or 3rd largest city in the country, so that didn't factor into my thinking in the above conversation at all.


 * Further, I think that whether or not Wellington, Porirua, Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt feel like different cities is highly subjective. I also am from Wellington, and have lived here my whole life, have worked in the Hutt and spent plenty of time in Porirua, and I don't hold the same opinion as you. To me they do feel different. As such, I don't think such subjective measures are appropriate determiners for what should be the focus of this page without at least some reliable source e.g. a proper survey of people's opinions about it in these areas. The closest thing like this that I can think of off the top of my head is the proposal for a Wellington supercity a few years back that fell through, largely due to opposition from Lower & Upper Hutt.


 * In the absense of that, I think the best basis for the page is some objective boundary, such as the area administered by the Wellington City Council, i.e. Wellington city.


 * I also note that the page does still discuss and reference the Wellington metropolitan area, e.g. in the section of the same name.


 * Nāku noa, nā --Radicuil (talk) 05:11, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Would it be useful to spin off a new article specifically about the Wellington metropolitan area, leavin this article focussed on Wellington City (the area governed by Wellington City Council ? That might help to resolve this. Marshelec (talk) 06:41, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I think a new article on the Wellington metropolitan area would be entirely appropriate. A question: is Wellington City the capital of New Zealand, or is the metropolitan area the capital? Is there legislation which makes it clear?- gadfium 06:47, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * No, that would just be too confusing. They're all just parts of Wellington- it's very strange to declare what are essentially low-density, contigous suburbs as independent and seperate cities in their own right (even if they are legally cities) completely apart from and uninvolved with Wellington. If they were geographically distant and did not share a public transport network, like Masterton, then sure, that's one thing. But it's ludicrous to suggest that travelling from Petone to Horokiwi is going from one equally important city to another. If Sydney's page is about the Sydney metro area, Wellington should definitely be the same. There's a reason why Sydney's page isn't split into thirty for its 30 LGAs. Aubernas (talk) 08:03, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * No legislation makes this clear, it's established purely by convention. Aubernas (talk) 08:04, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I had forgotten that there is already a reasonably useful article Wellington region. The introduction to that article is quite clear in explaining the different cities that make up the region. I remain of the view that this article Wellington, should focus on the area governed by Wellington City Council, but have clear explanations about the immediately adjacent cities, and links to the article about the region. The encyclopedia needs to explain the current situation as it is.  The metropolitan Wellington area does not have a super-city type of governance. There is separate governance, in Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt, and Porirua cities, and the names/ branding of those cities are well-known. With regards to public transport - the regional public transport system carries passengers from one city to another, within the Greater Wellington region. On its own, this does not support making this article about the entire Wellington region or metropolitan/ urban area.Marshelec (talk) 08:41, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

"Coolest little capital"
I have reservations about this quote being in the lead-

"Described by Lonely Planet in 2013 as "the coolest little capital in the world", "

Firstly, it's almost a decade old. But most importantly, it makes the article read like a tourist guide. Lonely Planet are manufacturers of city guides, and using one of their quotes in the lead makes it sound as if we are advertising Wellington. In my view, this contravenes Wikipedia's guidelines on hagiographic details on articles on geography, and Fancruft. Aubernas (talk) 10:21, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Coverage of parks, gardens and town belt
The article currently has only a brief passing mention of the Wellington Botanic Garden, and little content describing parks, reserves and the town belt. These are well-known and popular features of Wellington, so provided we can find suitable sources, it seems like this is worthy of a new subsection. The Template:Article templates/City indicates that parks could be covered as part of a section titled Attractions / Amenities, along with museums, recreation venues etc. However, there is already content about "attractions" under the Tourism heading. Museums and cultural institutions currently sit under a heading: Arts and culture. Feedback is welcome about how best to cover parks, reserves and gardens, and where to place this in the article, before I try to make a start.--Marshelec (talk) 02:35, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I suggest making a new heading 'Parks, reserves and gardens' somewhere under 'Arts and culture'. The content about attractions under Tourism I think needs to move the 'Arts and culture' so 'Tourism' is about the overview and economic aspects and then what tourists 'do' is separate. In the future 'Attractions' could maybe be added as a heading with subheadings. Pakoire (talk) 21:53, 28 November 2022 (UTC)