Talk:St. Paul neighborhoods

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[edit] Are these really neighborhoods?

The seventeen areas listed as neighborhoods are the city's planning districts, rather than neighborhoods defined in a traditional or sociological sense, and the planning districts in many cases don't line up with the neighborhoods as they would be defined by residents.

You can see some of the problems with using the planning districts as "neighborhoods" in the descriptions of several areas in the article. For example, the article places Concordia University in the Midway neighborhood. However, if the planning districts are being used to define "neighborhoods" then Concordia is properly placed in Merriam Park/Lex-Ham neighborhood (District 13). (Here's a map of the planning districts from the city's Department of Planning and Economic Development -- http://www.ci.stpaul.mn.us/maps/citymap2.html.)

A second example is the "Greater East Side" area. This is not a generally used description for the northeast corner of the city. Look at the list of neighborhoods that's been added under the Greater East Side heading. This list includes some neighborhoods that are actually in District 2 (the Greater East Side), but it also includes neighborhoods found in other "East Side" planning districts including Dayton's Bluff (District 4), Payne-Phalen (District 5) and Sunray-Battle Creek-Highwood (District 1) This reflects the more common usage of the "East Side" descriptior in the city. If you have a look at the District 2 Planning Council website, at http://www.district2council.org/, you'll see that they don't refer to themselves as the Greater East Side, but list the neighborhoods included in the planning district.

In some cases the planning district boundaries line up better with the generally accepted names for particular parts of the city. This is the case, for example in the Highland Park area. As a rule, however, the planning districts don't seem adequate for capturing the neighborhoods as they would be identified by residents of the city. 204.77.41.93 23:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)