Talk:Hartford, Connecticut

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Contents

[edit] Revitalization

I removed some statements, such as "brand new" that don't fit the neutrality rules and cleaned up the grammar. I removed the neutrality notice since it's better now, but put up a notice about the section being about future. I suggest someone keep an eye on this stuff, because it's going to be outdated very soon.

Having lived in Atlanta for a while, I think it's overkill to provide such details every single condominium and apartment complex being built (besides Hartford 21, which is a huge project). I understand in a stagnated city it's cool to see redevelopment, but this is an encyclopedia and things like this are daily events in most cities. I put them into bullet form, but if everyone agrees, it would probably be better to just list them. -- netdragon 4 July 2006

The entire Revitalization section is looking more and more like an advertisement, special thanks to the edits of Ctman987 (whom I suspect might be, or be an advocate of, architect Cesar Pelli). Much of the section should be trimmed (perhaps leaving a small overview paragraph of the projects). --AbsolutDan (talk) 18:25, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] North End and poverty

The "North End" is actually many different neighborhoods. Somehow, they have been lumped together . I suspect the media picked this term up from someone or some group with an agenda. It makes better news copy. I've been looking for better demographic data for the area but have come up empty so far. While I have my own opinions about the causes and solutions to Hartford's problems, I think we should stick to the facts. Poverty and crime exist in the "North End." Let's find out the numbers provided by different agencies and cite them. Let's keep politics out of the article. By the way, I did live in the West End until recently. The year I moved into my apartment there was a shooting one street over and my downstairs neighbor was arrested for selling drugs. Crime is everywhere. I am white and middle-class and I would move back if I could. Raynethackery 04:17, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the term "North End" is a bit innacurate because people are usually referring to the Northeast section between Main and Albany. The Nortwest end, where Watkinson is located, is an afluent area. -- netdragon 4 July 2006
What's the guidelines/precedent for removing text like the above in these Talk pages? AbsolutDan 15:08, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Text like above should not be removed because it's disagreeable. The response is to disagree with it, not remove it. Image:Tycon.jpgCoyoty 02:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Got it, thanks AbsolutDan 03:39, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

No mention of the North End or poverty, eh? Don't want people to know what the city is actually like... --163.192.21.45 21:38, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

The part about the North end is an off-the-wall embarrassment. Could it be any more weepy and suggestive?

"have been collapsed" - what does this mean? Who collapsed it?

"Generally identified as consisting of the vast area north of Albany Avenue leading up to the Bloomfield and Windsor borders" - the North end very much extends *into* windsor and Bloomfield, which is a pretty strong indicator that the next line is rubbish.

"racist city planning" - is there an example? This is a huge slander that identifies no particular perpetrator or victim, but indicts city leadership in general? Could this be any more vague and useless as a comment? Somebody turn off the waterworks. Boo Hoo. All the problems of the North end in terms of crime and poverty extend into Windsor and Bloomfield despite the fact that whatever "policies" are being cited in this article did not apply in those towns. You can hardly tell where Hartford ends and Bloomfield and windsor begin. This is hardly a "redlining" issue.

"transformed a once multi-cultural area of African-American, Jewish, and European immigrants into an underdeveloped zone of housing projects and slums that is nearly entirely African-American and poor." - in other words, all the non-black and non-puerto ricans fled the area because they were tired of getting picked off in the street? How is city leadership responsible for this?

"caused the flight of the working and middle class to the suburbs." - crime causes people to flee. This is the same phenomenon in any western city, American or European.

"still suffers from underdevelopment and crime" - unless that crime is being imported, saying that the area "suffers" is an evasive way of saying that the people in the community are not responsible for their own deeds. A better way of saying it would be "a ton of people in this area commit crime with no compunction for the decay it causes in their own neighborhoods, or in Bloomfield and Windsor." People do the crime, "racist" city hall gets the blame? No one has to sell drugs, trick out his sister, steal cars, or create a whole generation of unwed mothers with crack babies. Try being a cop or a high school teacher in Hartford and see how hard city employees work to turn around young people's lives, only to get shot at, beaten, or raped. The city has a healthy share of black and puerto rican gangs in an age where gang violence is considered on the decline in very large cities.

Hartford's actually a victim of suburban sprawl (re the Clinton report), where people -- like locusts -- keep ruining inner suburbs and then moving into undeveloped land in the suburbs up until the late 90s. That is beginning to reverse itself as land is becoming scarce and the downtown area is becoming a very attractive place to live for professionals. -- netdragon 4 July 2006

"The schools are among the most segregated" - this is a similarly-ludicrous statement as the "racist" city policies a few lines up. "Segregated" indicates that someone literally aimed to separate by race. It does NOT mean incidental ghettoization from non-blacks fleeing the area for fear of their lives.

While we are talking about the North end, don't forget the porn shops and strip clubs by the highway.

Hartford is a place with big city problems but small town money to fix those problems. The urban decay cannot be fixed because no one in their right mind would move into Hartford proper when they could easily live in one of the suburbs which are among the nicest places to live in the state. The city swells by day as people commute to work, and they are darn well out by nightfall so they don't get picked off in the street. The city is bankrupt and without hope, but it wasn't always that way. 71.234.31.169 09:46, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Not true. There's a re-urbanization of America and Hartford is starting to benefit from it. The downtown area is a prime location to live for professionals, and developers are starting to take note -- netdragon 4 July 2006

This North End section is still "weepy and suggestive," as one user wrote. I came here for useful research and I can't imagine how it would help anyone else, it certainly doesn't contain any information that will help me. It smacks of non-neutral POV. Somebody who knows something about the place and can maybe cite some sources, could we please get something put here that's less vague and moany?--65.16.61.35 18:25, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Where's the Gazetteer stuff for Hartford, and for Patterson, New Jersey? BobCMU76 03:53 18 May 2003 (UTC)

Try Paterson, New Jersey.  :) -- Zoe

[edit] Nickname

"Insurance Capital of the World" is the nickname used in Connecticut and most of New England. It may not be accurate anymore but it is still used. Raynethackery 04:34, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Is it worth mentioning "Insurance Capital of the World"? Does it have another nickname?

"New England's Rising Star" is plastered all over billboards in the region, but that nickname seems to be more self-promotion than an actual commonly-recognized nickname AbsolutDan 14:33, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I can find no source for the nickname "Des Moines of the East", so I reverted the nickname back to Insurance capital of... and rising star... AbsolutDan 14:25, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup - POV and other concerns

Does anyone get the feeling that they are reading something out of a travel brochure? I have been trying to rid the article of as many of these problems as I could. Pentawing 02:16, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I managed to go through the entire article and clean it up as much as I could (format, wikilinks, POV issues). However, I am keeping the cleanup notation up and would appreciate someone else going through the article to determine if the article is indeed cleaned up. What concerns me is that someone might attempt to restore many of the POV problems that the article originally had. Wikipedia is meant to show facts, not to be an advertising board. Pentawing 21:48, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I don't know the city, but I somehow doubt that this city is a major center of finance etc. :-) Perhaps a regional center at best. David.Monniaux 20:40, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Fair... Hartford is bigger than it looks (the city has about 100k, but the metro area is well over 1m, due to a level of suburbanization that you'd never see anywhere else in the Northeast), but isn't one of America's financial capitals or anything... but there's a lot of insurance. MMzach, 00:52, 31 Jul 2005 (UTC)
I would actually characterize Hartford as a major center of finance. It is known as the insurance capitol of the country and is home to most of the US's major insurance companies, and as such, certainly qualifies as a financial center. Keep in mind that CT is for all intents and purposes one large city that stretches between Boston and NYC so although Hartford, New Haven, etc. seem provincial, they aren't really.
I would also characterize Hartford as a major center of business....although some of the corporations that were in Hartford have moved to the suburbs they would never have been able to move to the suburbs if it were not for Hartford. Hartford is home to/ has offices for AETNA, St. Paul Travelers Insurance, MetLife, The Hartford, Phoenix, ING, United Technologies, Bank of America and Henkel Loctite just to name a few. 68.9.78.146 20:13, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Are we ready to remove the cleanup tag? RJFJR 03:21, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

  • I went through the article, and after some copyediting removed the cleanup tag. Pentawing 21:21, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Needs more photos.

Although the article has photos, it needs more photos especially pictures of its skyline. This should show the obvious developement of hartford.

I have lots of Hartford photos that I have taken myself I am just slowly trying to figure out how to put them on the site....if anyone knows how to easily get the photos on here let me know...Thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ctman987 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Famous Hartford Residents

Should there be a subpage for this section? It seems a little lengthy. Any thoughts? Raynethackery 04:29, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

It is a bit lengthy still, but some of it is due to the fact that it includes Hartford area residents as well as people who are actually from Hartford. Recently Laura Ingraham has been added and removed and replaced from/to the list. I can see how since she's actually from Glastonbury and not actually from Hartford, that she shouldn't be here. My personal opinion is that if you want to list people from the Hartford region and not just people from the city proper, they should be listed under the Hartford County, Connecticut article rather than here. --Elipongo 20:16, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Skyline

This article is lacking photos of Hartford's skyline and surrounding city. This needs to be worked on.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.0.81.116 (talk • contribs) 20:10, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
For the skyline, I'm waiting until Springtime so I can get a picture with all the trees green and without all the grey slush and yuck. I know a great spot where downtown fairly glows at the right time of day. As to the surrounding city, I'm not sure what you mean. We have some shots here and there are plenty in the Neighborhoods of Hartford, Connecticut sub-article. —Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 17:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] pictures

I noticed that there were no pictures of Hartford's neighborhoods in this article. So, yesterday I put a few on. I took the pictures, and they thus had no copyright, which I noted on them. They were deleted with no indication of why. I think it is important to show what Hartford actually looks like. 3 of these pictures are in the contributions section of my mexognosis. If you have any thoughts please share them in the Hartford discussion page.

?? no sign of such on the history page?? Gzuckier 15:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)


Yes it is important to show how Hartford loooks, pictures of a high quality such as the rest of pictures on Wikipedia (for the most part) are important also

This version of the article is I think what the anonymous user was referring to above. The pictures look ok. I think the only problem was their size and placement. --Polaron | Talk 05:06, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems that it's Emsley who doesn't like the pictures. He seems to have missed this discussion here because per his last edit, "if someone wants this photo gallery back, can you explain why (they are of poor quality and are barely indicative at all of the areas that they are claimed to represent". I myself think they look okay enough and will do until someone can take higher quality photos. I think they would look better placed into the sections on the various neighborhoods- in thumbnail size this time! I'd put them in that way, but I'm reluctant to get into a revert war over it. Any other thoughts on this?--Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 01:36, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Im responsible for the Hartford photo gallery. I agree that they are not spectacular, but they certainly don't need to be deleted. If anyone takes better quality pictures of the non-downtown areas, I agree that the photos should be deleted. But in the mean-time, I think that the pictures add to the article. Elipongo's idea makes sense. Although, I lack the technical skill to do it.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.0.15.0 (talk • contribs) 22:18, 25 December 2006 (UTC-5)


I've invited some of the people involved to join the discussion here. We all need to remember that reversion is mostly used to combat vandalism and we should respect other editors' contributions (WP:REVERT#When to revert).--Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 16:52, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey on proposal to make U.S. city naming guidelines consistent with others countries

There is a survey in progress at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements) to determine if there is consensus on a proposed change to the U.S. city naming conventions to be consistent with other countries, in particular Canada.

This proposal would allow for this article to be located at Hartford instead of Hartford, Connecticut, bringing articles for American cities into line with articles for cities such as Paris and Toronto.--DaveOinSF 18:10, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
However the proposal would allow U.S. cities to be inconsistent with the vast majority of other U.S. cities and towns, which (with a few exceptions) all use the "city, state" convention. -Will Beback 23:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
The inconsistency with other U.S. cities would last only during the interim period while everything is being fixed. Once completed, U.S. cities would be named consistently with every other article in Wikipedia - only those that require disambiguation would be disambiguated. --Serge 22:11, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
The proposal is not to change every city, just to change a selected number. Or is there yet another new proposal, one which this time changes every city and town? -Will Beback 00:23, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Crows

Can anyone explain all the crows off of I84 every night? Ralelen 00:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Lots of bird species tend to flock around dusk, probably similar reasons people have happy hour: establishing proper population density for a social species, finding mates, etc. Gzuckier 14:59, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Split off Neighborhoods

I have split off the neighborhoods section into a separate article entitled Neighborhoods of Hartford, Connecticut, leaving a summary in this article. The new article still needs some work so feel free to hack away at it! --Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 06:20, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Knowledge Corridor"

This moniker is clearly a marketing tool, not reflective of reality, and therefore does not, in my opinion, belong in an encyclopedia article. Hartford is promoted as such by the [Hartford-Springfield Economic Partnership] and the [MetroHartford Alliance]. However, any such region would have to logically include New Haven with Yale and four other universities in and around that city, not to mention the state's center for biotechnology research and development (Science Park, 300 George St., Pfizer, Yale-New Haven Hospital, etc.). To extend the title to "New England's Knowledge Corridor" ignores Boston, whose inclusion would go without saying. Let's avoid nicknames that are not based in verifiable information. InkQuill 16:15, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent Changes

I recently added in some photos from other Hartford related Articles (e.g. Trinity College, the Connecticut Convention Center, Mark Twain House). This, I feel, makes the article more up to par with those on other cities, and shows some important landmarks. After I changed this, Inkquill reverted it back to the original edit. What does everyone else think? Which version looks better? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mexognosis (talk • contribs) 20:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC).

Uhm, as far as I can tell your pictures are still in the article, just moved around a little by 209.222.210.165 (talk • contribs). The only thing that InkQuill (talk • contribs) did was revert some vandalism. —Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 00:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
No I changed it back after the revert —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.222.210.165 (talk) 00:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC).
This is the summary of the edits that you made diff. This is the reversion that InkQuill made diff, it obviously has nothing to do with pictures. Nothing was deleted as far as I can tell, just moved around. —Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 00:57, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

---Interesting, must have been a fluke with my internet. Well, looks like everything is in order. Thanks Mexognosis.User_talk:mexognosis |Talk]]

It looks like this issue has been resolved, but, just for the record, the only changes I remember making (which I was having trouble finding on my watchlist) was vandalism, as Elipongo noted. I did not intend to delete any photos, and they do appear to be there. InkQuill 22:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

-Yes, I have no idea why it reverted back to an earlier date, could have just been me not clearing my history enough and going to an earlier version of the page? Who knows. But, the issue seems to be resolved.

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