Talk:List of Philadelphia neighborhoods

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Contents

[edit] Questions

I was just wondering, how do you pronounce "Passyunk"? - 68.199.100.109 , 20:10, 7 August 2005

It's "PASS-shunk". Thunderbunny 06:33, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rework

I re-worked the list a bit, adding in some places, moving others and renaming some. The information that i used is based on these three links [1], [2], [3], and an ADC map of the city. I didn't include everything listed, and combined other places together, if you see anything out of wack feel free to make the changes as needed. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 07:22, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gayborhood

I'd like to add the name "Gayborhood" under the name Washington Square West. It's the same place, and everyone in Philly calls it that. What do you think? Eagleapex 02:03, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

No. --CComMack (t•c) 04:18, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Looky here: Official "gayborhood" street signs mentioned in the citypaper blog. I'm looking for another source. But I think Gayborhood should be included. Eagleapex 23:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it should be included. Someone added it a while back as a redlink (which could have invited entry creation), but it was soon reverted as "vandalism". (History page informs me that it was added on 2007-02-25.) In Philadelphia the identity of a neighborhood is not officially codified, but rather is a purely social construction, and the gayborhood definitely is just as "real" in that respect as any other neighborhood is. Hell, in that respect it's "more real" than, for example, Ivy Hill, which is often not even differentiated from the rest of Cedarbrook. (One thing about the list in Finkel 1995:156-170 is that its earliest known date for a written reference to a name is clearly often much later than when the name probably must have come about. That's a digression, but I guess that my point is that there is no holy written scripture that decides whether a Philadelphia neighborhood entity is "real" or "official" or quote-mark-whatever, but on the social-identity scale, they crop up and fade away over the course of decades, and the gayborhood is definitely currently a "real" neighborhood name.) — Lumbercutter 01:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re an "Official" List of the Neighborhoods (There isn't one)

The cities official list of neighborhoods can be found here:

http://www.phila.gov/phils/Docs/otherinfo/pname2.htm evrik 20:19, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Market East is not a neighborhood. evrik 20:19, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
That is not a list of official names of official neighborhoods, their is no such list that exists, that is a of neighborhood names, of which more then half are no longer used, that:

"are taken from Philadelphia Almanac and Citizens' Manual which was edited by Kenneth Finkel and published by the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1994 and 1995. It has been augmented by the staff of the Philadelphia City Archives." "The 1994 edition of this book contained 389 different names of various neighborhoods throughout the city of Philadelphia from the earliest days of Swedish occupation to the present. The following year, an additional six names were added to bring the list to 395. This list is being augmented yet again by the Philadelphia City Archives with names of neighborhoods, redevelopment areas, and other place names which have been assigned officially or unofficially to certain areas of the city. It is interesting to see the dynamics of neighborhood naming in over 350 years of occupation of the 129 square miles which comprise Philadelphia by the Native Americans, the Swedes, the English and German pioneers, and later and current Philadelphians."

--Boothy443 | trácht ar 20:34, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Show me a city document that says that Market East is a dsignated neighborhood. evrik 20:41, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
As stated above their is no official list of neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia, you also must have not read the statement above on how this list of neighbhoods was complied. Also your edits only go on to show that you have an exteremly narrow or little knowledge of Philadelphia, becides the fact you seem to know how to link articles. Their have been other editors that have added to the neighboirhood articles that i woured with to put this list together who have not question the vaibility of this list. A source that marks that area is [4], it is an area makred as dark red, that area is commonly know in the City of Philadelphia as market east, which it name derives from the tran station, fyi the area in pink is known as Penn Center, otherwise the areras are consider part of Center City. Know ould i expect evey perosn from Philly to know that neighborhoos or their names, no, in the say way that i was not totlay familair with all of the neighborhoods on the list. So i asking you to stop, if not i will just keep on reverting every misleading edit ythat you make for as long as you make them. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 21:00, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I found another 'official' list of neighborhoods from the PCPC.evrik 16:55, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
(http://www.philaplanning.org/data/datamaps.html)
Once again your misinformation just amazes me. Their is nothing on the webs site the designinates any official meighbourhood what so ever.A census track is not a neighbouhood, it is not uncommon to have several tracks in a neighbourhood. An empowerment zone [5] is not an neighborhood,

The Empowerment Zone (EZ) is a federally funded community development and economic revitalization initiative. The EZ designation provides localities with a federal grant and a set of tax and financing incentives to improve public safety, advance human development, create a welcoming environment and invigorate commerce

They are based upon census tracks, and like sensus tracks it is not uncommon for an Empowerment Zone to encompass several neighborhoods, either in whole or in part. Same goes for Enterprise Zones, Wards, Council districts, zip codes, no of which are specific neighborhoods nor do they desiginate official neighborhoods. The only information that is used id the planning distrctis, which are broad areas, which are used in the list to break the areras down. SOi'll stick with my sources, while you try to pull more ut of the air. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 22:26, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Mediation

I requested mediation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal#Philadelphia_County_and_other_Philadelphia_Pages

[edit] The problem with this list: Original Research

Okay, I'm going to kick over the anthill and say it: this list relies too heavily on original research. Yes, neighborhoods in Philadelphia are social constructs and not official or legal entities, but in general we should be trying to hold to only listing neighborhoods which have been mentioned elsewhere in reliable sources. Now, the good news is that it shouldn't be too hard to come up with such sources; Philadelphia is a much-written-about city, and there should be at least passing mentions in various printed materials, books, newspapers, maps, etc. But we shouldn't let this list bloat out with unsourced material. It might mean having to find sources for things "everybody knows", but we'll have a better article for it. —CComMack (t–c) 20:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

This is a good criticism. I just despair of how big a project it is to introduce refs for every neighborhood name on the page. Of course, with enough years, we will eventually do it. I think that we should not start deleting anything that's already here just for lack of a ref cite; that would just kill the whole page! Probably best to just stet any reasonable name pending a citation. (As for reference style, there are a handful of main refs (for example, Finkel 1995:156-170 and the phila.gov page adapted and expanded from that) that would need to be cited many times, so I think that Harvard referencing would be the appropriate method—using <ref> tags and <references/> would be horrendously ungainly for this particular application.)
I definitely agree that referencing is the right goal—Maybe I'll go through soon and put "(Finkel 1995:NNN)" for each one that is based on Finkel 1995. — Lumbercutter 02:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I should clarify what I said about "years". It could of course be done in mere days, but only if someone makes a project of poring over the various sources and collating each name with each source. What I meant was that it will take longer if no one tackles that project all at once. But maybe I or someone else will in fact do that sometime. Also, it would be awesome if you could click a link by each name and have the most-commonly-agreed boundaries of that neighborhood highlighted on a map of the city. These are some brainstorms for possible development. Now I must get back to work! — Lumbercutter 12:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I should, in turn clarify my statement: I certainly didn't mean that we should immediately purge all of the uncited entries in the list, but we should make a real push towards citing most of them. Having the sources is a good first step; there's a way to do <ref> tag references that shouldn't be too ungainly (when I have a few hours free, I'll demonstrate; it's really not bad. I've done it before on, e.g., Cincinnati Union Terminal). —CComMack (t–c) 19:53, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Map request

Map needed
 It is requested that a map or maps be included in this article to improve its quality.
Wikipedians in Philadelphia may be able to help!

Maps showing the details of individual neighborhoods inside the larger sectors would be very helpful. -- Beland 22:20, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

  • However being that their are no official boundaries given to neighborhoods, and some can very widely, any map has the poetential to be extremely subjective. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 23:20, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] fishtown / kensington

Are Fishtown and "Greater Kensington" in the Northeast or North Philly section? Fishtown is listed in both. Greater Kensington is listed in the northeast, but Olde K. and West K. are listed in North Philly. Are they not also part of "Greater Kensington"? My hunch is that they should all be moved to the North Philly section. -- Austin Murphy (talk) 18:50, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ====

My feeling is that anything east of Front St. and south of Pennypack is in the lower northeast and everything north of Pennypack is the far northeast. The PCPC separates it from North Philly along Front/Frankford/Tacony Creek and lists Fishtown, Bridesburg and Port Richmond as an area distinct from North Philly and the Northeast. The way I look at it is that the area east of Front St./Kensington Ave. is on a different grid with a different numbering system and has streets with the "east" designation. I wouldn't call it North Philly. 68.81.71.129 (talk) 15:48, 8 May 2008 (UTC) JR

[edit] Finkel / Library Co. list

This list that is cited everywhere is really the pits. It seems to be highly inaccurate. It gets really specific on dates and borders, but the ones I feel comfortable judging seem way off. Like Grays Ferry having been invented in the 1970's when the actual ferry is from the revolution era. I suggest being very careful with this list and not taking it as anything close to authoritative. -- Austin Murphy (talk) 20:48, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

You are completely right in that a lot of those dates strike one as being much later than the name in question seems likely to have been around. I have pondered that very issue myself. Each date is simply the earliest written mention that Finkel et al could find in the written sources that they consulted. That leaves at least two possibilities: (1) that their sample of source material was smaller than one could ideally hope for (and if so, I'm sure that they themselves wished that they could sample more sources); and (2) that there were many decades of a name being used orally before anyone needed to write it down in a document that would still survive today and that Finkel et al might have seen. One example off the top of my head is Ivy Hill. The date given at http://www.phila.gov/phils/Docs/otherinfo/pname1.htm is 1980. But Ivy Hill Cemetery has been there since 1867. Now, I would bet money on 3 things: (1) That the name of the cemetery was thought up by the developers for its pleasant, pastoral final-resting-place connotations; (2) that the neighborhood got its name from the cemetery, not vice versa (the area was rural when the cemetery was established); and (3) that local people have been calling the neighborhood "Ivy Hill" since many decades before 1980. I could be wrong, but those things seem likely. I don't think that makes Finkel et al grossly wrong about all their names and boundaries; it's just that you have to take their list for what it is, which is one team's compilation based on a certain sampling of source material. And you have to take the dates for what they are—only the earliest written attestation that anyone has documented so far. It's only one version of things, but I have to say that I'm glad they bothered to make the list, because it's more than we'd have otherwise. Anyway, here's a toast to digging up earlier attestations, and citing them here at Wikipedia's list! — ¾-10 03:44, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] West Philly

Resolved.

- Mdsummermsw (talk) 16:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The picture of "Rowhouses in Cedar Park" is mislabeled. The houses are semi-detached and thus "twins" not "rowhouses". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.81.71.129 (talk) 15:24, 8 May 2008 (UTC)