User:Rsduhamel/cdp

Proposed Wikiproject: unincorporated communities and census-designated places
Note: This project will make significant changes in the make up of articles about unincorporated communities and possibly cities across Wikipedia. There is a wide range of opinions about how or whether this should be done. Before the scope and goals of this project can be defined there needs to be some discussion and a consensus reached. Please read the background and general goals below. Your comments are welcome.

Background
Some time ago Ram-Man used a robot named Rambot to create articles or add census statistics to most articles about cities and other communities in the United States. Part of what Rambot did was split articles about unincorporated communities, that the U.S. Census Bureau had split into multiple census-designated places, into separate articles. For example, the article about Lakeside, California was split into two articles, one about the Lakeside CDP and the other about the Winter Gardens CDP. In other words, the article about Lakeside is now only about the eastern half of Lakeside.

This is not the correct use of the term census-designated place. The U.S. Census Bureau does not set the boundaries for communities and cities. In California it is various Local Agency Formation Commissions (LAFCOs). According to the San Diego LAFCO Lakeside includes the the Winter Gardens CDP (mail sent to Winter Gardens is addressed to Lakeside, California). The article about Lakeside should not have been split.

Furthermore, Rambot labeled every unincorporated community as a CDP. For example, the article about Borrego Springs, California begins "Borrego Springs is a census-designated place...". My apologies to Ram-Man but I find this offensive. I don't live in a census-designated place. I live in a neighborhood called Bostonia and I take offense at my community being reduced to a three-letter acronym. Furthermore, the neighborhood of Bostonia is mostly within the city limits of El Cajon, California. The Bostonia CDP doesn't even cover the area that most people (and the USGS)consider the center of Bostonia. CDPs are for the convenience of the Census Bureau for statistical purposes. CDPs do not define the boundaries of named communities and can change from one census to another. Calling a place a CDP is only appropriate when that place doesn't have an identity as a single community, such as Casa de Oro-Mount Helix, California.

I am proposing a project to clarify the areas covered by cities and communities and the role of the CDPs in those areas.

Goals

 * Find named communities that are labeled as census-designated places and call them something less acronymish. I propose "unincorporated town" for communities that most people would call a town and "unincorporated community" for isolated communities too small to call a town. Neighborhoods should be called neighborhoods, etc.


 * Find named communities that have an identity as a single community but have been carved up into two or more CDPs. Change the article about the CDP by the same name and correct it to reflect the nature of the larger community.

Other proposed Goals

 * Where a large community has been split into two or more CDPs, Merge articles about several CDPs into a single article about the larger community. Or...
 * Move all articles about CDPs to articles about the CDPs. For example, the article about Spring Valley, California could be moved to "Spring Valley, California (census-designated place). A new article about Spring Valley as a whole would be created to take its place.

My personal opinion is that there is no need for a separate articles about every CDP in the U.S. This is like a separate article about every neighborhood in the U.S., whether the neighborhood is notable or not. Many CDPs cover unincorporated parts of cities. For example, El Cajon, California is an incorporated city. However, there are four CDPs where the people receive their mail addressed to El Cajon, California. Two of these CDPs (Bostonia and Granite Hills) cover neighborhoods that comprise land both inside the city limits of El Cajon as well as unincorporated county land. I have edited the articles to denote that there is a difference between the neighborhoods and the CDPs but it is rather clumsy. I think it would be better to include the CDPs in the article about El Cajon. In that article the greater El Cajon are should be covered as a whole and then the CDPs covered separately and briefly in the demographics.