Talk:City of Brussels

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ambiguous name

There's been a fair few comments at Talk:Brussels about the name of this article, but I'm not sure we have consensus, so let's continue here. (Please feel free to format any replies any way you want. This is inherently messy.)

Both the municipality and the wider region are called "Brussels". Both can be considered cities, so both could be called "city of Brussels" with lowercase c. Only the municipality is called "City of Brussels" with capital C.

@Vpab15 the issue is that Mediawiki always uppercases the first letter of a title, and therefore cannot distinguish reader interest in uppercase and lowercase. So it's not easy to tell what's the most effective way to organize navigation to accommodate this.

English-language mainstream sources about the "City of Brussels" always refer to the municipality (at least those that know what they are talking about). It is the official name, see City of Brussels and Brucity (official websites in English). A quick search online will also render distinct results for "City of Brussels" and "Brussels".

@Jason Lagos the issue here is that https://www.brussels.be/ doesn't actually explain to the readers any of this. They use the term CITY OF BRUSSELS in the heading and the term City of Brussels in the footer, but there's zero mention of "we really just mean this specific municipality and the use of uppercase C in the City of prefix carries extra meaning". There's likewise no such thing explained at https://www.brussels.be/brucity either. Indeed, even the article at [1] doesn't say this up front, rather it delves into this complex merging idea without defining the terms for the reader. These are really just bad sources for an encyclopedia, because they're not WP:secondary sources.

Note also that a quick search online doesn't mean much for the average reader, because search engine results are personalized. For example, when I do a general Google search for City of Brussels, all the result snippets other than this Wikipedia article just says "Brussels", they don't go into this distinction up front. Is this indicative? Maybe, maybe not. But if there's a risk that a lot of other people have the same experience, we risk surprising them by focusing on that distinction.

As is covered in the final paragraph of Comparison of American and British English § Government and politics, the use of "City of X" to mean the municipal government of a place is a feature of American English but not of British English, so there is a WP:COMMONALITY reason to avoid it – especially for cities which aren't in America or Britain.

@Ham II so if I understand you correctly, you're saying the title "City of Brussels" isn't understood by the average reader to be a reference to the municipal government, but rather the city in general? So we should make the title City of Brussels redirect to a more general description of Brussels? Would we merge its content into that article, just like Brussels-Capital Region is redirected there? Or should it be kept under a different title, in which case, what would the different title be, City of Brussels (municipality), or maybe one of the incoming redirects like Brussels (municipality) or Brussels municipality? Many of them seem to be just as ambiguous, like Brussels (city) or the city of Brussels.

Thanks. --Joy (talk) 07:22, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Brussels-Capital Region or just Brussels are the two main names of the region. The municipality is called City of Brussels or just Brussels. "Brussels" is the ambiguous term here, not "City of Brussels". Vpab15 (talk) 09:29, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

No, both are ambiguous, because this "city of" prefix is too generic, it doesn't disambiguate it for the normal reader. --Joy (talk) 11:00, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Hatnotes like the one at City of Brussels can help disambiguate article titles for the normal reader. Ham II (talk) 11:11, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Hatnotes can help, but organizing navigation in a way that doesn't treat normal readers as the exception would be better. That's the point of the commonness, naturalness and recognizability criteria in the WP:AT policy.

Let me try to rephrase. Do the municipal borders strictly define what the sources and the readers would call Brussels? Is e.g. Saint-Josse-ten-Noode part of the city of Brussels? Is a feature or a landmark found there describable as something found in the city of Brussels? --Joy (talk) 11:56, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely Saint-Josse-ten-Noode is part of the city of Brussels - it's not really even a suburb - look at the article. The Brussels-Capital Region "region" is a actually rather small, and walking right across it is not a colossal thing to do, unlike say London. City of Brussels is what English would normally call "central Brussels", and a rather tight definition of that. The free tourist maps of "Brussels" I think show all 19 municipalities, if not in their entirety. This is the sort of thing the articles need to explain, but mostly don't. Johnbod (talk) 16:09, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

@Joy: Thanks for continuing the discussion. In that paragraph of mine you've quoted from I was discussing the various ways "City of X" is handled on Wikipedia which you had presented in an earlier comment. The sentence you've quoted was specifically objecting to City of Madrid redirecting to Madrid § Government; I don't think it's that relevant to the Brussels case, because by "the municipal government of a place" I meant literally the governance of that place, rather than a "specific municipality", which is what the City of Brussels is.

In my !vote at Talk:Brussels § Requested move 20 December 2024 I said that "[t]he target for the name of a country's capital city shouldn't be a disambiguation page". By that I meant that the "main" article with the information a reader is looking for should be titled Brussels. That is essentially the status quo, just that the scope of the "main" Brussels article has been defined as the Brussels Capital-Region. Vpab15 pointed out to me that the actual capital is the subject of this article, the municipality called the City of Brussels.

A further complication is that the article Brussels metropolitan area exists, and fr:Bruxelles, de:Brüssel and it:Bruxelles (i.e., the "main" Brussels articles in those languages) are linked to it on Wikidata, as is nl:Brussel (stedelijk gebied) – "Brussels (urban area)" in Dutch.

The cleanest split I can currently think of would be the following:

• Brussels: retain this as the "main" article on Brussels, make its scope the urban area instead of the Brussels-Capital Region, and merge the stubby Brussels metropolitan area into it. (Roughly analogous to London.) Change the Wikidata link from Brussels-Capital Region (Q240) to Brussels metropolitan area (Q9005).
• City of Brussels: leave this where it is, to indicate the existence of a municipality within Brussels called the City of Brussels. (Roughly analogous to the City of London.)
• Brussels-Capital Region: move material that's specific to the Brussels-Capital Region from Brussels to a new article with this title, and link it to Brussels-Capital Region (Q240) on Wikidata. (Roughly analogous to Greater London.)

Of course, this is more work than keeping the existing three-way split of Brussels (for the region), City of Brussels and Brussels metropolitan area. Ham II (talk) 10:44, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Again, it seems like we're missing the forest from the trees here :) the term "city of Brussels" describes both the intricate municipality as well as, you know, the city of Brussels :) This is a general encyclopedia, not a specialized resource on administrative subdivisions, we should not prioritize the latter. --Joy (talk) 11:48, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

@Joy: The official websites that I linked in my previous reply are both those of the municipality. You asked for sources in English proving that "City of Brussels" consistently translates like that and always refers to the municipality and I provided some. The municipal services available through those links and the new administrative centre referenced in the second one only concern the City of Brussels and its inhabitants. Other municipalities have their own websites and services, and likewise for the Brussels-Capital Region. Of course, they are not going to explain verbatim on their respective pages "we really just mean this specific municipality or region" since it is commonly understood in Brussels and Belgium as a whole what "City of Brussels" and "Brussels-Capital Region" are.

Anyway, here are some local secondary sources completing my earlier point, as requested:

• VRT News (Dutch-language public broadcaster): "Big population increase in the City of Brussels and Evere, population falls in Sint-Gillis and Sint-Joost-ten-Node" The population increase reported here took place in the municipality.
• Belga (primary national news agency): "In particular, the central municipalities score very poorly, with expats in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, Forest, Ixelles, the City of Brussels, Saint-Gilles and Schaerbeek all rating their area poorly in terms of cleanliness." The same logic here regarding cleanliness.
• The Brussels Times (English-language newspaper): "Brussels residents will have free access to Belgian Beer World from 12 to 25 November, announced the City of Brussels on Friday." A good example of the common distinction: "Brussels" here refers to the region, "City of Brussels" to the municipal authorities.
• The Bulletin (English-language news magazine) : "The City of Brussels wants to reserve the central pedestrian zone on Boulevard Anspach for walkers by banning bicycles, scooters and other two-wheelers." That decision was made by the municipal authorities, not the regional ones.

And some international sources:

• Reuters "The Region and the City of Brussels will issue decrees banning demonstrations with trucks on their territory" Here as well, the distinction between region and municipality is clearly made.
• Politico: "City of Brussels suspends (but doesn't cut) ties with Moscow". The ties here were suspended with the municipality, not the region.
• The Guardian: "City of Brussels set to honour killed British MP Jo Cox". Again, the municipal authorities made that decision, not the regional ones.
• Euronews: "In Neder-Over-Heembeek, a village isolated from neighbouring districts, "the challenge is to connect [it] to the rest of the City of Brussels, ensuring exemplary and balanced urban development in terms of preserving and enhancing its natural heritage." Same here. Neder-Over-Heembeek (a municipal district) needs connecting with other districts in that same municipality.

You will find more references in publications, press releases, listings, etc., by the European Commission, UNESCO, ULB/VUB (main universities), and the list goes on.

@Ham II: I am sure of your good intentions here, but I would strongly argue against the proposed splits and moves. We should remember that, although Brussels is comparable to London or other capital cities in terms of its overall status and structure, the similarities end there. As you probably know, language and political boundaries are a highly contentious topic in Belgium. Merging "Brussels metropolitan area" into "Brussels" or changing the scope to the urban area instead of the Brussels-Capital Region will no doubt lead to heated debates. "Brussels" is already analogous to "Brussels-Capital Region" and the current "Brussels" article only covers material specific to the city-region (with some minor exceptions like Brussels Airport, which is outside the region's territory, but this is not uncommon for airports). I am thus struggling to see what material specific to the Brussels-Capital Region could be contained in a standalone article. Only administrative or legal matters? Either way, we would end up with the same number of articles (3) with less clearly defined titles, which do not necessarily match up to Belgium's federal boundaries, and might also risk opening a terminological Pandora's box. If there are any inconsistencies with some Wikidata entries, I believe they should be corrected at that level.

@Vpab15: Your assumption that both the municipality and the wider region are called "Brussels", which has been the basis for most of this discussion, is also mostly wrong. In French and Dutch, the central municipality and de jure capital is officially and commonly called "Ville de Bruxelles" or "Bruxelles-Ville" and "Stad Brussel" or "Brussel-Stad" respectively (translated as "City of Brussels"), not "Bruxelles" and "Brussel" ("Brussels"), a name that is widely reserved for the entire city-region, both nationally and internationally, as discussed at lenght at Talk:Brussels. The Belgian Constitution makes the broad meaning of the terms clear. The "Brussels-Capital Region" is just the legal name of "Brussels" and the "City of Brussels" a municipality within that city. It is as simple as that.

I generally think all these discussions, including the previous ones at Talk:Brussels, though well-meant, have gone on for too long. The move proposals that started it all have been strongly rejected. The "Brussels" and "City of Brussels" articles were created in 2001 and 2004, and have kept those names ever since. Why move or rename perfectly stable articles? And if they were so contentious or unclear in the first place, why is this being brought up now, at the end of 2024? Jason Lagos (talk) 03:17, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the examples, but I don't think we quite see eye to eye about the idea of WP:secondary sources. All four examples in the first list are news articles talking about specific events. There's some value in seeing these terms uses so casually, but there's also a bit of inherent slant, because when e.g. a news source cites figures a statistical resource that is inherently bound to administrative boundaries, it's not a general reference to the city but one operating specifically according to these boundaries. Or when they talk about a legal ordnance instituted by a specific administration, of course those references will refer to those specifically.

At the same time, it's easy enough to find contrary examples in the same news sources, when they also casually speak of the city based on a more loose definition such as the region.

Secondary sources are supposed to provide analysis and synthesis of the facts of the matter, not just cursory mentions like this. Likewise, a Constitution is a primary source.

I agree that Brussels metropolitan area is a topic that probably shouldn't be merged with just Brussels, because the whole metropolitan area is probably not referred to as the city of Brussels, and we don't do that for other cities.

I still don't quite see what would be the problem with describing the administrative characteristics of both Brussels-Capital Region and City of Brussels in the same Brussels article, and have both of those terms redirect to the Brussels article, not just one.

Overall, maybe the fact that there's been these discussions for too long is supposed to be a clear indicator that things just aren't as simple as that :) --Joy (talk) 14:12, 29 December 2024 (UTC)