Talk:Eurobodalla

City vs Town

See the Wikipdia [1] Article. City and Town are not that well defined in the English speaking world. And we need a good short name for this section, and City is the best.

Response

City is not the best. Have you been to the south coast of New South Wales? Do you have any idea at all about the geography and population disbursement of that part of the world? Batehaven has a petrol station, motel, post office and is smaller than most European villages. Batemans Bay is a town. Have you read the city article. As a native speaker of English I can assure you that these town in the South coast would never ever be described as having an urban core, described as substantial, ... whatever - fishing hamlet might be a useful comparison, they are tourist villages. Town versus city is quite adequately distinguished in English to the extent that there would be no way an English speaker would ever get confused that most of these places were cities. The city of Shoalhaven [2] is not a city but a municipal local government area with its centre Nowra and is mainly rural - the urban core is Nowra. It's population density is 19 people per square kilometer. Nowra New South Wales has been classified as a city, it has a population of 29,000. To my knowledge it is the only city in the region.

Perhaps to gain a common understanding we can use population density. The density of the city of Shoalhaven is 19 people per square kilometer. The shire of Eurobadalla's population density is about 10 people per square kilometer. (Eurobodalla is to the south of Shoalhaven and includes Batemans Bay and Moruya). The density of the country of Denmark is 126 people per square kilometer. [List of countries by population density] While the population of Ausatralia averages 2 people per square kilometer, the south coast is by definition near the coast, has a good rainfall, ... the majority of Australia is dry and does not support large population numbers.

To go on about the subject, the city article you refer to is quite clear that "There is no one standard international definition of a city: the term may be used either for a town possessing city status; for an urban locality exceeding an arbitrary population size; for a town dominating other towns with particular regional economic or administrative significance. Although city can refer to an agglomeration including suburban and satellite areas, the term is not appropriate for a conurbation (cluster) of distinct urban places, nor for a wider metropolitan area including more than one city, each acting as a focus for parts of the area." The towns on the south coast have limited administrative functions, are small in population size, do not fit the definition of city contained in the article you nominated as reference point.

I note that the article states it is an "interesting phenomenon in American English is the generalisation of the term city to all settlements." While spelling in Wikivoyage may be consistently American English, that does not mean that variations in word usage should be made consistent. The very great majority of travellers to the south coast of Australia will be Australians and this article may well be their introduction to Wikivoyage - the articles and the classification of places within them need to make sense for that place. All English speakers will know what a town is, many will not understand the generic use of city to any settlement.

As a compromise, I propose to have two sections, the city section will include Nowra, and the towns section will include the rest - not including Shoalhaven since it is only the Local Government area.

(WT-en) AYArktos 19:37, 26 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Yes, I was at the south cost of NSW in 1994.

Section names are not supposed to be precise descriptions. That you can put inside the sections. ==Get Out== is not places you necessarily go out to, you can come from them too. Some places in ==Drink== is really places for dancing, not drinking. Concert venues are under ==Do==, not ==Listen==, etc. As for both Cities and Towns, we should not go around inventing sections, and it should not be just you and me deciding it. Try to change the manual of style first. --(WT-en) elgaard 20:16, 26 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I mentioned this issue on the travellers pub. --(WT-en) elgaard 20:27, 26 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Manual of style

Project:Region_article_template#Cities talks about "a few prominent cities in the region" being covered by the Cities section within a region article. It does not at any stage hint at describing towns or other settlements as cities. Note this page also refers to the comments below each heading as "editorial comment, with suggestions for what should go in each section" - not prescriptions. --(WT-en) AYArktos 20:33, 26 Sep 2005 (EDT)

The prescription to use "a few prominent cities" only applies if the region has subregions. "Regions without sub-regions, though, just have cities in them." In other words, all cities in a region should be included in the Cities section if there are no subregions. And as an aside, in USEnglish, all towns are cities. There is a vague inference of size from the particular chosen word, but it's pretty darn vague. (Yes, I know UKEnglish has a more specific definition derived from the fact that "city" has a specific legal meaning in UK). -- (WT-en) Colin 20:58, 26 Sep 2005 (EDT)

As per the discussion above we are talking a petrol station and post office, ie hamlet. The style page claims to "suggest" which imples not being prescriptive. Moreover under the regions section the page says "If the sub-regions have specific names ("county", "state", "province", etc.) feel free to change the name of this header to "Counties", "States", etc." In other words in some countries they have provinces, in others they have states. No one is suggesting New South Wales in Australia is described as a province or British Columbia in Canada as a state even though the governmental concepts are probably similar. Just as we do not live in a province, we live in a state; we don't have cities on the south coast of New South Wales, we have towns. City also has a legal meaning in Australia and a place has to be gazetted as a city to be so-called.

In the UK I note that the sub heading in the UK Lake District National Park article is "Cities, towns and villages" (in fact none of the places under that heading are cities but at least Kendal has 30,000 inhabitants). --(WT-en) AYArktos 21:23, 26 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I'm normally as zealous as they come when the issue is conforming the headers, but in this case I agree with AYArktos (see Falkland Islands, where a "city" is usually just two houses and a few thousand sheep). That said, this discussion should really be moved to Project:Region article template. -- (WT-en) Wrh2 21:27, 26 Sep 2005 (EDT)

• Discussion at Wikivoyage_talk:Region_article_template#Cities seems to agree that there should be only one section, that it is OK to use towns or villages where appropriate but that it is the exception. Several other editors concur that the exception does apply in areas not just the south coast of NSW but also the Lake District, the Falkland Islands, and Svalbard.--(WT-en) AYArktos 18:02, 27 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Removed a lot of towns

A lot of towns were incorrectly placed here, probably because somebody thought Shoalhaven was the South Coast. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:26, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Proposed rename July 2022

I propose to move this page to Eurobodalla, in line with Shoalhaven and the Illawarra. As I mentioned on Talk:New South Wales, "South Coast" is ambiguous and this article only covers the Eurobodalla Shire so it's a bit misleading.

After renaming, I'll fix all the links and then I propose to make South Coast (New South Wales) an extraregion linking the four region articles of the Illawarra, Shoalhaven, Eurobodalla (this article that is) and the Sapphire Coast, finally putting an end to the "South Coast" ambiguity.

Other thoughts? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 05:13, 23 July 2022 (UTC)