Talk:North Rhine-Westphalia/Archive

North Rhine-Westfalia

Ehm, On Wikipedia they spell it as North Rhine-Westphalia. --145.99.202.92 17:14, 28 Nov 2005 (EST)

LP guide does too. -- (WT-en) Brendio 19:40, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

Never heard of em. B-) --(WT-en) Evan 22:31, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

It seems like everyone does. The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names doesn't even have "North Rhine-Westfalia" as an option, and Google seems to show it only as typos. I've moved the page; thanks for the quick eye. --(WT-en) Evan 22:44, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

Regions

Regions proposal for North Rhine-Westphalia

Regions proposal for NRW

Obviously the Ruhr is a logical region, but anyone has ideas on how else to divide the state? --(WT-en) globe-trotter 16:12, 12 August 2010 (EDT)

It is already divided on Rhineland, Ruhr and Westphalia. If we need to divide it furhter, we could use the administrative regions of Düsseldorf (excluding Ruhr) and Köln instead of Rhineland, and Arnsberg (excluding Ruhr), Detmold and Münster instead of Westphalia (or we could use Northern Rhineland, Southern Rhineland, Northern Westphalia, Southern Westphalia and Eastern Westphalia), --(WT-en) ClausHansen 16:29, 12 August 2010 (EDT)

I've been doing some research on it, as the current subdivision is pretty bad for a state with more than 17 million inhabitants (larger than many countries such as neighboring the Netherlands). I came up with the following cultural, geographical, historical areas:

• Westphalian Lowland [1]
• East-Westphalian Hills — merges the Weser Uplands [2], Teutoburg Forest [3], Lippe, Ravensburg Hills and Minden-Lübbecke
• Lower Rhine [4]
• Rhein-Ruhr [5] — with two subregions:
  • Ruhr [6]
  • Cologne Lowland [7]
• Sauerland-Siegerland — merge of both Sauerland [8] and Siegerland [9]
• Bergisches Land-Westerwald [10] [11]
• Eifel [12]

--(WT-en) globe-trotter 21:38, 12 August 2010 (EDT)

That looks fine to me, --(WT-en) ClausHansen 02:28, 13 August 2010 (EDT)

I've tried to show the regions I mean on a map I have created. This is obviously not a final map, but just a map to show the regions I proposed. A few issues came up:

• Wesel is officially a part of the Ruhr Area, but I think it looks weird when the Lower Rhine Region would not actually connect with the Rhine. Wesel also belongs in the Lower Rhine (it actually belongs in both regions), but as it is more rural of nature, I've placed it in the Lower Rhine region. Also, the Ruhr river doesn't even come close to it.
• I'm not really sure where to place Düsseldorf, Bonn and Cologne. These are large cities that could be said of having their own sphere. The NRW Tourism Agency gave all three of them their own region (see [13]), but then we might get a bit overcrowded with regions. For now I've combined Cologne and Bonn into Cologne Lowland. Cologne and Bonn simply don't belong to Bergisches Land (historically) and also not to the Eifel (as they are plains). I placed Düsseldorf with the Lower Rhine, as it is generally not considered a part of Bergisches Land.
• I dropped the Rhine-Ruhr Metro Region, as parts of Lower Rhine and Bergisches Land would also be part of it. That would create a monster region without any cultural or historical link.
• I renamed the Westphalian Lowland to Münsterland, as much of the Westphalian Lowland continues through the Rhine Valley and even the Cologne Lowland could be considered a part of it. This name makes it more concise.
• I renamed the East Westphalian Hills into Teutoburger Forest, as that forest includes most of the area, and parts of the area not even a part of Westphalia (they are a part of Lippe).

Please tell me what you think of it, and come with additions/changes if necessary. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 21:16, 13 August 2010 (EDT)

Map is done, all I need is some advice before I make it official ;-). I did make one change, I placed all of Rhein-Sieg-Kreis into Cologne Lowlands so the whole municipality would fall under one region. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 16:12, 16 August 2010 (EDT)

I have now implemented the map and the new regional structure. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 13:45, 23 August 2010 (EDT)

proposal to change "Sauerland-Siegerland" to "South Westphalia"

Coming from the Sauerland, I must say that merging the two makes a lot of sense for tourists. However, I'm not quite happy with the name: This area contains other, smaller regions such as Wittgenstein and is usually called w:de:Südwestfalen. Wittgenstein is part of the Kreis Siegen-Wittgenstein and surely belongs to this meta-region, but is not really a part of the Siegerland (any local would disagree strongly if you'd call him/her a Siegerländer ;-)). The term Südwestfalen is used by many institutions (e.g. the local Radio/TV studio of the WDR located in Siegen, the Handwerkskammer (= chamber of handicraft?) Südwestfalen or the South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences), so imho it would make sense to change the Sauerland-Siegerland into something like South Westphalia. Cheers, --El Grafo (talk) 13:50, 14 March 2014 (UTC)