Talk:Liège (city)

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Contents 1 Name 2 Can you identify the buildings? 3 Unemployment 4 Third most populous city

[edit] Name

Why was the name changed in 1946? Matthew 18:50, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

The difference in spelling (from Liége to Liège) can be related to better describing the prononciation of the name in standard French. LHOON 20:16, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that. What prompted the change - political will? Popular demand? Government fiat? And how was it received - were people unwilling to change the name of their city? I'm interested to learn more! Matthew 23:50, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

This would be an interesting subject indeed. In any case, the change must have been approved by the government as in Belgium the King (i.e. the government) defines the spelling of municipality names.

A local newspaper (now having become a local page of the national newspaper La Libre Belgique) has always been called Gazette de Liége, one page about this paper states:

"La Gazette de Liége" (avec un "é", l'accent grave ne sera jamais adopté par le journal, a contraire de la ville de Liège qui s'est alignée sur les recommandations de l'Académie Française en 1946)[1]

which means that the change was done on recommendation of the famous Académie Française, underlining the French language thesis I mentioned first. One should note that the local Walloon language in Liége is very different from standard French.

The whole spelling change is unknown to most of the younger generation for whom it has always been Liège. I stumbled on it seeing Liége in old documents, and want to know more about it too.

An interesting example of the changed spelling can be seen in Paris, France, where there is a street named after the city. One streetsign shows Rue de Liège, a surviving much older sign on the opposite corner showing the old spelling Rue de Liége ! The adjacent metro station, and likely also the street itself, was initially named Berlin, but this was changed in 1914. LHOON 07:07, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

From french wikipedia : The authority of the city "decided" to change the name, and the king of belgium did change the name. Notice that people from Liège are still called "liégeois". I also learned recently that Cork, called liège in french was also written liége before 1878. Jrenier 18:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Can you identify the buildings?

Can you help me to identify five block buildings which are on Image:Pano Liege guillemins 5juin.jpg at about 1/4 from a right border? Nowadays they look very ugly and unused. What they were in the past? I guess, they are here: [2] Thanks! Miraceti 10:24, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

it might be a school. check also wikimapia.org Jrenier 15:10, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unemployment

31% unemployment rate? That's dismal. I am missing an explanation for that. --Petzi1969 00:18, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The tendency for healthy people is to go live in the green surounding, outside the city. That make the statistics grow in liege and decrease in the suroundings. Jrenier 08:50, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. Why don't you include this in the article?--Petzi1969 01:04, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Why not, indeed. Quite hard to explain it good though. Jrenier 16:43, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Third most populous city

The article said that Liege was the third most populous city in Belgium, after Brussels and Antwerp. That's not correct. Antwerp is the largest city, after that comes Ghent, Charleroi, and then comes Liege. If one would count all the municipalities in the Brussels Capital region as one city, than Brussels (145.000 inhabitants in its own municipality) is the largest city. So Liege is the 4th or 5th most populous city in Belgium. And if you would consider the urban areas as 'the city', then Brussels is still the largest (1.3 million), Antwerp (900.000), and then both Charleroi and Liege have around the 400.000-500.000 inhabitants (Ghent follows with around the 350.000 inhabitants). In terms of agglomerations (metropolitan regions), the largest agglomeration is Brussels (almost 2 million people), after that Antwerp (almost 1,5 million), and after that again both Charleroi and Liege are fighting over place 3 and 4, since they both have around the 600.000 inhabitants (after that comes Ghent, with around the 450.000-500.000 inhabitants). From what I found at the internet (mostly in Dutch), both Charleroi and Liege claim to have the largest urban- and metropolitan area. Some sources: belgie.nl and diplomatie.be. --Robster1983 17:37, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Charleroi is not even close to be as big as Liège. Charleroi is clearly the biggest city, and Liège clearly the biggest metropolis (including agglomeration). This had been discussed thousand time on fr wiki and is now clear. see this link that use the same source than you. Jrenier 15:08, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

You are right, I stand corrected. I started to search the internet for the numbers, which I found. The difference in the agglo-population, between Charleroi and Liège, is more than 100,000, in favour of Liège. I added the numbers to the articles of the different cities (with source, of course). --Robster1983 17:14, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

More than 200,000 :-) (Aires Urbaines Liège: 728,000, Charleroi: 481,000). I also added both numbers for Liège, since there are several links on the internet, with several numbers, depending on where you put the boundries. But no matter which numbers one is using, Liège is the largest agglomeration in Wallonia, and third largest in Belgium. --Robster1983 17:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)