Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/World's largest urban agglomerations

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus, defaulting to keep. Although there are a number of merge proposals below, there does not seem to be a consensus on any one way to handle this data. Further discussions about any potential merges can be handled through the regular editing process. --jonny-mt 04:16, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] World's largest urban agglomerations

AfDs for this article:
Articles for deletion/World's largest urban agglomerations
World's largest urban agglomerations (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Of all the various lists of cities by various definitions, this one is particuarly problematic. By its own admission, it cannot be relied upon as fact, and it is essentially a repost of some data compiled as part of the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects report, which was not focussed on defining and listing agglomerations. The figures are not consistent with the definition of "agglomeration". Rarely have I seen a talk page which so comprehensively laments the many failings of its article. List of metropolitan areas by population may not be perfect, but it is essentially pursuing the same goal, and is more useful and better defined than this article. Deiz talk 14:22, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Keep List is sourced to the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects report. The article clearly states the limitations of the information given. There is no need to hide this information from readers. --Polaron | Talk 20:45, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
  • If you can explain how Tokyo is listed as 35,676,000 (thats an agglomeration) but Seoul is listed as 9,796,000 (city proper, not even vaguely close to the population of the actual agglomeration) I'd be interested to hear it. The information here is largely useless and the article title is nonsense, as there is no attempt to include only agglomerations. It would also have been honest to note that you are a frequent contributor to and de facto custodian of the article, hence don't want to see it deleted. Deiz talk 00:07, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
All of the list is the UN's classification and the UN's terminology. The list makes no claim to be anything more than that. --Polaron | Talk 02:15, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
So given that it is not listing agglomerations, but a mish-mash of various different definitions of cities, how can you justify the article as currently titled? Seems empiricially obvious that a list containing cities proper should not be presented as a list of agglomerations, in the same way that a list of famous women would not contain famous men. I still see little or no merit in presenting the list as a Wikipedia article, even if - as would have to happen if it is kept - it were renamed. Just because the data was compiled and presented by the UN, it is not automatically suitable as the primary subject of a WP article as your last comment seems to suggest. Indeed, straightforward reposting of lists from magazines and reports has been a copyright issue in the past. Deiz talk 04:25, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
The UN calls it a list of agglomerations. Are you saying Wikipedia editors should be the one to decide how to define these areas? --Polaron | Talk 16:02, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Cities proper are not agglomerations, hence the title is grossly inaccurate, and the data is hopelessly mismatched. I'm saying we shouldn't listify any old crap the UN churns out. Deiz talk 22:41, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Singularity 05:41, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Rename - to something more specific. UN list of xxx?. List of xxx in the UN yyy report? With explanation of definition problems.
  • Delete The talk page for the article is worth reading, if that many people are dissatisfied with the utter inaccuracy in this article just delete it. The UN is rarely even the best source of data on the UN itself, let alone other countries. L0b0t (talk) 13:03, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Please go through the history more carefully. Most of the arguments on the Talk page were during the time that List of metropolitan areas by population was nominated for deletion and the result was for it to redirect to the already existing UN list. That article was only recently restored. Also note that if one goes through the UN report, the primary sources for definitions and bases for population figures are the various national census authorities themselves. The UN only tabulated the figures and did forward projections. There is nothing inaccurate about the list as all definitions are clearly listed. --Polaron | Talk 15:06, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Then the question is, what source to use for that single article? You should also note that metropolitan area, urban area, and urban agglomeration are all different concepts (and different articles too). Are you saying those three articles should also be merged? --Polaron | Talk 15:28, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Question Yes, that is precisely what I am suggesting, 1 article with data listed 3 ways. Or, is there a way to make the table user-sortable? That is, could we have 1 table that lists the data, and have it sortable by urban area, agglomeration, or metro area by clicking on a column header? L0b0t (talk) 15:30, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

As far as sourcing, List of metro and list of Urban areas are both single source. Urban is from http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua2015.pdf and Metro from http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/cityfutures/papers/webpapers/cityfuturespapers/session3_4/3_4whicharethe.pdf. Both would seem, at cursory glance, to be asking for copyvio troubles. The Agglomeration is sourced to the UN but the parameters across the board seem confusing. L0b0t (talk) 15:51, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Keep and continue to discuss how to do it on the talk page. the actual topic is notable, & different enough from related articles. DGG (talk) 02:40, 29 May 2008 (UTC)


  • Delete How can you compare metro areas with city propers. There's too many of these "Biggest City" pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BOBOBOB133 (talk • contribs) 20:55, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge to List of urban areas by population or Rename to something like "List of urban agglomerations defined by UN World Urbanization Prospects" or Delete. The UN have provided two datasets using the same term: Demographic Yearbook revised every year and World Urbanization Prospects reveised every two years.

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2.htm

http://esa.un.org/unup/

In both DYB and UNUP, urban agglomerations in the United States are the same with urban areas defined in the USA census, while urban and metropolitan area definitions are used as urban agglomerations in DYB and UNUP for Canada, respectively. For Japan, UNUP uses both metropolitan and urban (DIDs) definitions in confusion, while DYB does not record any urban agglomerations. For Germany, UNUP 2003 uses metropolitan definition (Rhein-Ruhr, Rhein-Mein, etc.), while UNUP 2005 and UNUP 2007 only use city proper definition. The term "urban agglmerations" used by the UN is inconsistent, but seems usually referred to urban (or urbanized) areas (as appears in the census of India).
Urban (urbanized) areas and metro (or metropolitan) areas are different. But I think there is little difference between urban areas and urban agglomerations, when used by some nations' censuses.Aurichalcum (talk) 02:42, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.