Template talk:Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown MSA

Cities and towns
I was wondering what the criterion should be for listing an area under the "Cities and Towns" part of this template. Does it need to be an incorporated city (or town), or if a CDP could also be in the list. If the former criterion is used, The Woodlands and Spring would be disqualified even though they have articles of their own and populations of 75,000 and greater than 36,000, respectively. I would think they should probably be included because much of the growth in the far North of the Houston area has been in or is due to these areas.

In the meantime, I'll come up with a suitable and more inclusive name if I can think of one. Thanks. Ufwuct 02:51, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * User:WhisperToMe and I have added in unincorporated areas. See updated template. &mdash;RJN 04:17, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


 * What happened to the Unincorporated Areas? They were only here for about 5 days.  Was the template "getting too big" because of the 119 cities and towns listed or because of the 11 unincorporated areas?  Please tell me what your thoughts are.  My posts on these discussion pages are not requests for work; I'd like to hear your thoughts in detail.  I could make the changes myself, but I'd like to hear opinions.  Thanks. Ufwuct 19:54, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I noticed that The Woodlands, for instance, is larger (by 2000 population and 2005 population estimate) than the first 75 entities listed in "Cities and Towns" and larger than 114 (all but 5: Houston, Pasadena, Sugar Land, Baytown, and Galveston(only larger in 2000)). So, I'm still not sure why all of these towns were put here and all unincorporated areas (all but 3 or 4 seem notable) are being left out.  I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable about geography and there's close to 10 "cities" I've never heard of.  My overall favorite has to be Quintana: population 38. Ufwuct 20:02, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I am thinking of taking this template out of articles altogether. What do you think about removing the template or listing it for deletion? I want to take it out because it is useless and is taking up a lot of space in articles&mdash;even for an article as large as Houston. I feel this template is redundant since there is an article on Greater Houston linked on (almost) every page. Within the article on "Greater Houston," there is a link that list all of the cities and towns within the U.S. Census defined Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area (see List of cities and towns in Greater Houston). &mdash;RJN 00:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I deleted all cities less than 5,000. I think that this makes it a more manageable list.  Perhaps we could further split it into 5000-15000 and 15000+.  I'll work on it later. Ufwuct 23:45, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Pasadena is the second largest city in Harris County why should it not be a "principle city"? Justin 03:28, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I "replied" in my edit summary. If you want to verify that my reversion was correct (or prove me wrong), Polaron is a good person to ask.  Ufwuct 03:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Re-rediscussing Greater Houston template
Reading Alberta today, I noticed that they use 2 pop-down  templates. This tackles the space requirement that RJN objects to (present tense, as I hope he'll come back some time :) ). The Chicagoland template lists only cities of a certain size.  This addresses the problem I had regarding the elevation in status of some very minor cities (e.g. Quintana, Texas, pop. 38) over larger CDPs (e.g. The Woodlands, Texas whose population is more than 1,000 times greater). This would also further address the issue of article space.  Maybe a good cutoff would be 10,000 people?  I will edit the template first and then consider re-adding to the article if there are no objections.  Thanks. Ufwuct 21:29, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Rework of the template
The template really needs to be a proper Navbox which allows collapsing and other niceties. I'm proposing that we switch to using the following. --Mcorazao (talk) 17:57, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I have to admit that this template has been neglected. Thanks for taking the time to address the outdated format. Anyway, take a look at the one below and tell me what you think. It is based on what you have proposed. Thanks! &mdash;RJN (talk) 20:58, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Looks fine to me.

--Mcorazao (talk) 21:33, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * P.S. Not that it is essential to be entirely consistent, but other metro area templates seem to use the commonly used names for the area in the title instead of the OMB designated names. E.g. Template:SF Bay Area, Template:Chicagoland, Template:Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, South Florida metropolitan area. Up to you. --Mcorazao (talk) 21:33, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Prefer "Greater Houston" as name and " Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown MSA" as title. Postoak (talk) 23:19, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I like the proposed template! I have no preference for the names used. WhisperToMe (talk) 07:35, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion
Since maritime industries are such a big part of the metro area's economy I was wondering if a section on the ports might not be worthwhile (the articles need some attention but still). Perhaps something like


 * Major ports   Houston (Barbours Cut, Bayport)· Texas City· Galveston

If anybody wants to create articles for Houston's Turning Basin terminal or others those could be added in the parentheses as well.

Note that I ordered these in terms of trade volume but they could be ordered alphabetically if desired.

--Mcorazao (talk) 15:35, 2 February 2010 (UTC)