Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about districts

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Naming convention

The comment of one editor in the current debate at Talk:Dover#Requested move has set me thinking as to whether we are right to name articles on districts which share a name with a settlement x (district) rather than x District. The editor thought that Dover was "highly likely" to refer to the district. I don't think that's at all right. It is just possible, but unlikely. I think District should be part of the name, not simply a disambiguator. The official title is Dover District. We use City of Leeds rather than Leeds (City) - why not apply the same principle to districts? --Mhockey (talk) 12:10, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This has come up a few times over the years and I think it is perfectly reasonable to move to X District. Although many of the districts have borough status and would move to Borough of X. Some things to get straight upfront:

If the name is unambiguous, we should not move South Cambridgeshire to South Cambridgeshire District or Thurrock to Borough of Thurrock.
Many boroughs had a previous existence pre 1974 and some work would be needed to ensure Borough of X and Municipal Borough of X are properly disambiguated.

MRSC (talk) 15:08, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Districts that are also counties: Buckinghamshire and Wiltshire (not?)

The section "Districts that are also counties" includes Buckinghamshire and Wiltshire (possibly others, I just know of these two). This is possibly confusing names with places.

Buckinghamshire (the county) has two Unitary Authorities: Buckinghamshire Council and Milton Keynes City Council. So it has two "districts", one possibly called Buckinghamshire (it is surprisingly vague and doesn't have its own article) and the other called City of Milton Keynes (which is significantly larger than the city itself).
Wiltshire (the county) has two Unitary Authorities: Wiltshire Council and Swindon Borough Council. So it has two "districts", one called Wiltshire (also doesn't have its own article) and the other called Borough of Swindon (which is larger than the town itself).

I would fix it if I could understand what the section is trying to say. I think it is already bogged down in "terminological inexactitude" and I don't want to make it worse. Anybody? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:49, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Historically it made sense to simply keep it all in the county article, explain the separate districts there and spinoff the visibly different named ones into a new article, but Wikidata has begun to have entries for all the different geographical concepts so that they are logically linked together. Maybe then reword the section to 'Districts that share their name with counties'. As some of them have their own article, for completeness makes sense to separate them all as they are a different entity to counties. All the county pages use a map which helps explain the district breakdown and those should continue to be used. The Equalizer (talk) 22:09, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There is a parallel discussion on this here, addressing local authority areas which share the name of a ceremonial county. The recent tendency to turn whole non-metropolitan counties into unitary authority areas has created a bit of a mess in WP, and it would be good to have some consistency.

Legally all unitary authority areas are non-metropolitan counties, and I don't agree that UA areas which were counties under the two-tier system are "a different entity to counties". All that happened is that their councils acquired new powers. If we just consider UA areas which were non-metropolitan counties before they also became UA areas, there are two scenarios:

1. UA areas which coincide with the whole area of a ceremonial county: Bristol, Cornwall, Herefordshire, Isle of Wight, Northumberland and Rutland. I can't see any case for creating a separate article for a district which is the same area as a ceremonial county and a previous non-metropolitan county. An article about a county is essentially an article about a geographical area. It may have had different governance arrangements over time, but to have multiple articles for one area would lead to confusion and duplication.

2. UA areas which cover most, but not all, of a ceremonial county and share its name.They are still commonly referred to as "counties" (unlike the ex-district UA areas), as they were before. That did and does create a certain amount of confusion and ambiguity in the real world outside WP, but that confusion and ambiguity is best clarified and explained in a single article - as it was before they became UA areas. We need to avoid saying "Buckinghamshire is a local government area in Buckinghamshire".

WP already treats four of the eponymous UA areas within the article on their ceremonial counties: Buckinghamshire, East Riding of Yorkshire, Somerset and Wiltshire. We have separate articles for Dorset (district), County Durham (district), Shropshire (district) and North Yorkshire (district). These separate articles add to the confusion. I don't think anyone refers to those UA areas as "districts" - if anyone can find a reliable source which does, it would be good to know. Those four articles could easily be merged into the articles on the ceremonial counties, to create a single article on each county, as we had before the two-tier system ended. In the same way we do not have separate articles for administrative counties just because they covered a slightly smaller area than the geographic counties they were part of.--Mhockey (talk) 23:39, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Buckinghamshire article as it stands does a good job of walking the tightrope. Most of it is about the physical, social and economic geography of the county; it has a short section on governance, pointing readers to the relevant articles for details about the Councils and their politics. Indeed the article was much improved when that material was hived off a few years ago. So my quibble is not about the county article itself but only about how it is treated in this article ("How to write about districts"). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:24, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think the difference between an administrative county with UA(s) and 2 tier districts to a ceremonial county with ua(s) in addition to the one with the same name as a the ceremonial county is if you think about Leicestershire, we say both Leicester and Hinckley and Bosworth are districts of Leicestershire, the only difference is Leicester is administrated separately both otherwise both are the same. With say Shropshire the district of Shropshire has the same status as the district of Telford and Wrekin and it can be confusing to have one of the districts in the same article as the county its self. That said even though I advocated splitting UAs years ago I'm wondering if its actually a good idea. Indeed I don't think anyone is suggesting the likes of Northumberland should be split as the district is exactly the same as the ceremonial county, not that Cornwall ceremonial county also has the Isles of Scilly so is actually the same as the likes of Wiltshire not Northumberland. I guess if we assess if we should split or not we could look at boundary changes when the unitary came about similar to the decision on merging Somerset County Council and Somerset Council. In all cases of unitary districts with the same name as the ceremonial county but with different boundaries it seems only Dorset and possibly East Riding of Yorkshire had newly formed boundaries when formed, the others have the same area as the "previous" 2 tier administrative county. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:38, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]