Talk:Arlington (Virginia)

Can anyone write or find a brief (3 or 4 paragraph) history of Arlington to include here? 222.212.9.140

Understand section

I removed the following inaccurate (the CIA headquarters is in Langley, not Arlington) and rather rambling paragraph.

Arlington county consists of many suburban neighborhoods as well as pockets of urban development surrounding Alexandria and the Metro stops along the Orange line. Much of the development of the county was spurred by the massive growth of the Federal Government in the 1950's (the Pentagon and CIA headquarters reside in Arlington) and the continuing growth of private contractors in the region. The suburban areas are diverse as some areas are dominated by pricey homes and high income residents, while other areas are dominated by low-income (mostly immigrant) residents.

I'd like to keep the Understand section focused on what makes Arlington unique for travelers. Obvious sociological type comments that some areas have high income residents and some low income residents could describe almost anywhere and don't really add any value for the visitor.

That said, maybe the sections we should focus on now are Sleep, Do, Buy and Drink. Arlington has so much in these areas yet the article lists very little. I think if we beefed up those sections this article would definetly be worthy of guide status, then we could hash out the understand section. (WT-en) SONORAMA 11:36, 1 August 2006 (EDT)

Promotion to Usable

All this needs for Usablecity status is some complete listings for the Eat section and maybe a couple more Sleep. Locals? (WT-en) OldPine 06:53, 31 October 2006 (EST)

Break up

While this is somewhere between a county and a city, it is too dense an area to fit into one article. It should be broken up along the lines of Rosslyn, Crystal City, etc. That could be done as a region page + city articles, but I would prefer to see it done as a city article + districts. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 03:09, 13 March 2009 (EDT)

The problem IMO is that few people look up "Arlington" by itself. Instead they plan to go to Washington DC and work or happenstance directs them to Arlington. There's not even that much that links to the Arlington page, esp. as compared to the DC page. (WT-en) SONORAMA 09:57, 13 March 2009 (EDT)

True enough—I think the best way to deal with that would be to add more links to Arlington from DC and from Virginia and nearby Virginia articles. And as a matter of fact, having multiple articles within Arlington Co. would mean more links pointing to this (very important) travel destination. I've switched back to treating Arlington as a region (as it is a county, even though it is also a city) and treating its sub-cores as small city articles (since from any perspective other than an administrative one, they are small cities). I don't think I'm leaving anything out:

• Ballston
• Clarendon
• Courthouse
• Crystal City
• Pentagon City
• Rosslyn

I don't see any good reason to not do this, but there are several reasons pro: 1) each of these areas could support a well-developed Wikivoyage article; 2) if you visit, they all seem like separate small cities (despite living in the D.C. area for most of my life, I didn't actually realize there was only one city govt administering these areas); 3) sorting listings is very easy, and would make the task of keeping listings properly trimmed more manageable; 4) information about Pentagon City is not relevant for someone basing himself in Clarendon (which has plenty to keep a visitor busy) while visiting D.C. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 03:58, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

Peter, I'm generally not a fan of sub-dividing city articles (it can be hard to navigate across several pages) however what you are proposing makes sense. I'd suggest we get a good clickable map that to break out the different districts. We should also have a section in the main article that explains who would want to stay in which area (vacationers can stay anywhere near a metro, but military types would want to stay in Crystal City or Pentagon City, State Department types in Ballston or Rosslyn, FDIC in Clarendon, etc.) I can provide that content and some things about each sub article, however I have had all manner of trouble uploading photos recently so someone else would need to do a map. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) SONORAMA (talk • contribs) .

Draft Arlington map

Well, I've delved into both the official and unofficial street boundaries that I could find, and I see that they consider these population cores to be much smaller than I had expected. Accordingly, I combined a few:

1. Rosslyn
2. Pentagon-Crystal City
3. Clarendon-Ballston Corridor (includes Courthouse)

I think these agglomerated cities/neighborhoods will better support articles. I don't know what to do with the leftover areas, which are comparatively suburban and uninteresting. Not to say that there isn't a lot of material there that could support an article—there is. So I have two suggestions: 1) create a catch-all article called Suburban Arlington, which would cover everything not listed above, or 2) leave all information outside the three city articles above in this article. I don't like either option very much, but the former is much more in line with general Wikivoyage policies. (Btw, the map to the right is only a draft for discussion purposes—I can make that much prettier and more of the Wikivoyage-style later.) --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:07, 31 March 2009 (EDT)

I confess I've rather lost interest in this, and am beginning to see how the guide could work as a single article. A map, I think, would still be useful for navigating the various "neighborhoods." I'm going to try and spruce this article up in the near future. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 15:41, 21 April 2009 (EDT)

Break up 2014

I think I might have a solution for the Suburban Arlington problem: make the two regions North and South Arlington. North and South Arlington are two of the county's locally-recognized sections (the other is Alexandria). Clarendon-Ballston Corridor is entirely in the North, and Pentagon-Crystal City is mostly in the South, the definition of "South Arlington" is lose enough that we can put it entirely in the south. The border between the North and South is (for the most part) Arlington Boulevard (US 50). Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 17:47, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

That doesn't quite solve the problem tough, Rosslyn and the Clarendon-Ballston Corridor are both in North Arlington. We could accept covering them both in the same region, or make Rosslyn it's own region separate from North Arlington. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 07:21, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Break up 2017

Well, it looks like there's been consensus to districtify this article for about eight years now, but no one has actually done it! I think the "suburban Arlington" problem is solved by splitting it into two districts: "Central Arlington" south of the Rosslyn–Ballston corridor, and "Far North" north of it. The two sections have very different characters and work well as their own districts. So I suggest the following breakdown:

• Arlington (Virginia)/Rosslyn–Ballston Corridor
• Arlington (Virginia)/Crystal City (including Pentagon City and Aurora Highlands/Arlington Ridge)
• Arlington National Cemetery and nearby points of interest, including the Pentagon
• Arlington (Virginia)/Central (including Columbia Pike and Shirlington) Arlington (Virginia)/Southwest
• Arlington (Virginia)/Far North

Thoughts? Antony-22 (talk) 06:53, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

At least finish the job. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:14, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

This article isn't super-long, though there are a lot of hotels. Would there be enough content in all those articles? Is there more stuff to add? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:57, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

They all would have enough; Far North would be the only thin one. I can add a lot of items to Crystal City and Central Arlington. Antony-22 (talk) 17:56, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

That's cool, then. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:08, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

The main city article should have some useful text in the See and Do sections. --Traveler100 (talk) 19:11, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Please get the district articles to some state above outline. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:03, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Why was the map removed? Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 09:34, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

You guys have done some good work splinting this city up into districts. I'd like your opinion on the Fairfax County article. Ikan and I were talking at Talk:Northern Virginia, and we realized that Fairfax County had too many cities for a single region. Our quick fix was to subdivide the "Cities" section of that article, separating the cities inside and outside the beltway. I'd like you guys to look over the FF county article, see what you think should be done. Should our quick fix be our permanent solution? Should FF County be split into two or more regions? Or do you have some other idea? Please respond at Talk:Northern Virginia. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 11:18, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Inside the Beltway" area

One possibility would be having an article for the "Inside the Beltway" area. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 06:58, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Are you proposing that as an extraregion article? Do you think one is needed? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:02, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Not necessarily. At this point, I'm just throwing an idea out there (I'm not saying it's necessarily a good idea). I suppose my line of thinking is that Beltway is a natural border, a divider between one area and another. Whereas the city limits (well, county limits) of Arlington are pretty artificial, and probably less meaningful to the tourist. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 07:40, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Is Arlington a city?

I disagree with this edit. Wikivoyage is written from a traveler's point of view, not from a legal point of view. Everyone calls Arlington a city, everyone think of it as a city, and that's really what it is. I think calling it an "urban county" is just going to confuse the reader, that's not exactly a common term. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 10:28, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree; we use "city" colloquially here. The clarification that it's technically an "urban county" should be secondary to simply describing what the average traveler would identify it as. Powers ^(talk) 21:24, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Who is "everybody" exactly? It's not about legal definitions, but referring to something clearly known as "Arlington County" as a city is going to introduce confusion. Call it what it is, a county. It isn't necessary or desirable to elaborate; the scope of a county will be understandable to any traveler to the U.S. "Urban county" is neither here nor there, as most populous counties have "urbanized" areas.-Choster (talk) 03:06, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I think it's known as "Arlington" much more commonly then it's known as "Arlington County". At least, outside of legal contexts. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 03:18, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

A Google search for "Arlington, Virginia" (with quotes) has 6,210,000 results, but "Arlington County, Virginia" has only 341,000 results. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 03:26, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't see what that has to do with anything. The US Postal Service will deliver mail addressed to "Rosslyn, Virginia" but that doesn't mean we should refer to Rosslyn as a "city," even if it's the most "urban" part of Arlington. We should call it Arlington. The article should be named Arlington. But we shouldn't say "Arlington is a city," because it's ambiguous when we can say "Arlington is a county" with a comparable level of comprehension to anyone traveling in the United States.-Choster (talk) 02:09, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Whether Arlington is a city or a county may be relevant for Wikipedia's purposes, but nitpicky differences like that have little relevance from the traveller's point of view. Regardless of the official terminology, Arlington is far more akin to what people think of as a city, so that's the word we use. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 02:40, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

You said that it's "clearly known as 'Arlington County'". I'm making the case that it's not known as "Arlington County", outside of legal and technical contexts. But more to the point: Counties in America are referred to as "[Name] County, [State]", not "[Name], [State]". Calling it "Arlington, Virginia" implies that it's a city.

Plus there are quite a few American cities that are technically counties (such as New Orleans and San Francisco), so Arlington isn't really unique in that regard. The Census Bureau classifies Arlington as a census-designated place, and that's a category they give to unincorporated cities, not counties. And I could probably find a ton of maps that show Arlington as a city.

I don't agree that any traveler to the US would know what a county is. But for those who would: A county is a collection or towns or cities, with some rural or suburban areas. That's not what Arlington is. Arlington isn't divided into cities and towns, it's divided into neighborhoods (like a city). There is no city in Arlington, other then Arlington itself. Remember, Arlington is the second-smallest county in America (it's even smaller then the other cities that are technically counties).

My point is: I really don't think there should be any probation on calling Arlington a city. I think calling it a city is less confusing then calling it a county. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 11:11, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• USMC War Memorial Night.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:35, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• USMC War Memorial Night.jpg

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 21:10, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion challenged. A previous deletion request was closed as kept for lack of copyright renewal, but it would certainly be smart to upload this photo locally. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:33, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Uploaded locally. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:02, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• USMC War Memorial Night.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:53, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

The nominator (who filed a speedy request) says the copyright was renewed, while it was assumed not to have been renewed in earlier requests. Whether the cited renewals are about this monument, and whether they were accepted, is unclear to me. Anyway, it seems we have a local version now (thanks to IK, see above). –LPfi (talk) 07:37, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Undo districts?

Right now, I don't think the districts are really helping the traveler. All districts but Crystal City and Rosslyn–Ballston Corridor are outlines, and the two usable articles are not even that long, while the two outline articles are only a little more than a skeleton. I personally think Special:PermaLink/3188279 is more useful to travelers as most district articles only contain a few see listings. Arlington National Cemetery can probably stay as a park article. After all, Arlington only has a population of 250k, and the only other article that I'm aware of that has districts with a similar population is Buffalo.

If there's objection to undistricting Arlington, at least, the Far North and Southwest pages should be merged. They only contain 18 listings combined, and are a little more than an outline. So to summarize, here are the few options to deal with the districts:

1. Do nothing
2. Merge Far North and Southwest into Suburban Arlington
3. Merge all districts back leaving Arlington National Cemetery alone as a park article
4. Merge all districts back, including Arlington National Cemetery

Other comments? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:57, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm torn because it looks like merging everything would create a pretty long article. I think if we're going to do that, leaving Arlington National Cemetery as a park article could be a good solution. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:18, 3 July 2022 (UTC)