Talk:Miami-Dade County, Florida

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Good article Miami-Dade County, Florida was a nominee for good article, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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[edit] Cutler Ridge

The Cutler Ridge area is now a city of its own, right? --Joel M. 03:48, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)

I am fairly sure that Cutler Ridge is not its own city. It is still simply an unincorporated area like Kendall. --Ameinias

It is an incorporated city now. It was incorporated on January of this year. --Moreau36 0553; 15 November 2005 (UTC)

It's name was also changed to Cutler Bay, Florida last year. - Marc Averette 16:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up for me guys. --Joel M. 03:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Urban Developement Boundary

I was wanted to develop an article that discussing Miami-Dade County's reconsideration of moving the UDB farther west. I have never created an article, and do not know where to start. Could someone point me in the right direction? Thanks alot. Ameinias 02:19, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Miami street grid

I've moved the following edit here because it is overly technical and unsourced. -- Dalbury(Talk) 17:48, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

The grid loosely follows a Cartesian coordinate system. There are four quadrants" North East, North West, South West, South East. The "origin" of the grid is the intersection of Flagler Street (x = 0) and Miami Avenue (y = 0); therefore this would be plotted as (0,0) on a graph. Any street south of Flagler is "negative"; once you past Flagler going south, the street numbers increase because you are increasing your distance from the "origin". An avenue west of Miami Avenue is also considered "negative", and increase in value the farther one is from the "origin".
All north-south streets have an "avenue" or "road" affixed to its numerical value. All avenues that end with the number "7" are major avenues. One mile separates 10 avenue blocks. For example, a there are three miles distance between 7th Avenue and 37th Avenue. Most major avenues other than those that end with a "7", end with "2". Avenues such as 42nd Avenue, represents a half mile marker between 37th Avenue and 47th Avenue.
All roads running east-west are called "Streets" of "Drives". In the second table, streets do not seem to follow a pattern, but most do. In the southern quadrants of the county, the major streets run by 16's, which is visible in the streets from South 88th Street (North Kendall Drive) to South 24th Street (Coral Way). Going by 16's we can see the major streets: 24, 40, 56, 72, 88. Even streets that are listed here follow the same rule, and are major streets. South 168th Street is also a major street because 152 + 16 is 168. Similar to avenues, the distance between every 16 street blocks is one mile. This creates a larger grid of one-mile-by-one-mile major grid of major streets and avenues, along with a smaller grid for roads in between. This "rule of 16" is not as applicable to streets north of Flagler, and is not followed as strictly as the "rule of 7" for the avenues.

Does this mean that the above should not be included in the article because it is too technical? I think that the nature of the grid accompanies the table of the major street names. Ameinias 19:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

All the stuff about Cartesian grids is unnecessary. It's especially confusing to talk about "negative" streets. I also think that the 'rule of 7' and the 'rule of 16' are too esoteric for this article. It is enough to say that the street grid is based on Miami Avenue and Flagler Street, that numbered 'avenues', 'courts' and 'places' run north-south, and numbered 'streets', 'terraces' and 'ways' run east-west, and that addresses north of Flagler Street and east of Miami Avenue are 'Northeast', north of Flagler Street and West of Miami Avenue are 'Northwest', south of flagler Street and east of Miami Avenue are 'Southeast', and south of Flagler Street and west of Miami Avenue are 'Southwest'. There is the one section of Miami where the street grid is turned 45°, and avenues run northeast to southwest, while roads run northwest to southeast. Other than that, 'road' and 'drive' are not used for numbered streets. And, of course, Miami Beach, Hialeah and Homestead all have their own numbered street grid systems. And this all has to be sourced. The site at [1] covers part of it, but I can't find a good source, other than a map, to document the use of 'court', 'place', 'terrace', and 'way' in the number grid system, although I do remember reading that many years ago, and know that is how streets are named in Miami. -- Dalbury(Talk) 20:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I think a separate article for South Florida road numbering system would be a valuable article. ℬastique▼parℓer♥voir♑ 20:31, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I'll have to find a source as well, although mine regarding "streets", "terraces", etc. is for Broward County. BTW, Dalbury, Roads and Drives are, in fact, used for offshoots of Streets and/or Avenues, at least here in Broward County. It doesn't preclude their usage with non-numbered streets. I'm not sure if that system is the same as in Miami-Dade. ℬ 20:40, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
The default numbered street grid systems in south Florida seems to be on the same basis as Miami's (i.e., NW, NE, SE, SW), although there are exceptions (Miami Beach and Hialeah, that I know of). There are a number of different street grids in Palm Beach County, including one for the unincorporated part of of the eastern half of the county.

'Road' and 'drive' are used for non-numbered names of streets in Miami that are supplemental to the numbered street system, so that Gratigny Drive is also N 119th Street, and LeJeune Road is also W 42nd Ave. But there is no particular pattern for which is used, as Bird Road is S 40th Street, and Red Road is W 57th Ave, so that Red Road and Bird Road intersect (there are several businesses near the intersection with 'Red Bird' in their names). -- Dalbury(Talk) 21:48, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Right, I see. Something like Boulevard (E-W) and Road (N-S) in Broward County, except that sometimes--like Ocean Boulevard (N-S) or McNab Road (E-W) things are a bit different. ℬastique▼parℓer♥voir♑ 20:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Demographics

According to the cenus website (the map of Florida counties by percentages of those that are white, non-hispanic) [[2]], Miami-Dade County is 20% Non-Hispanic white, not 11%. Could somebody verify which figure is more accurate? 71.161.247.147 16:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC)Mike

The table at the Census Bureau site does not break down Hispanic/Latino by race. The percentage for Non-Hispanic whites given in the article appears to have been derived by subtracting *all* Hispanics for the number of whites, although it is too low even for that (69.70% - 55.32% = 14.38%, not 13.67%). I've moved the offending statment here: "Non-Hispanic whites make up 13.67% of the population." We need to find a reliable source that actually states that percentage. -- Donald Albury 02:54, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed from Category: Florida counties?

Is there a reason why this article was removed? Now all the counties in Florida except Miami-Dade are in the category. Should they be removed as well? Was this done in error? - Marc Averette 13:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind - I see the new cat charter counties - Marc Averette 19:05, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA failed

Needs much more work for GA - references, considerable expansion, and the "Cities, towns, villages, unincorporated communities, and public high schools" section needs some serious work, starting with splitting it up into several sections. - Aerobird Target locked - Fox One! 02:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name change

I think a link about why the county changed its name, and perhaps the voting percentage/total, would be good. OverMyHead 19:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm also curious as to why the county got its name changed. If I'm not mistaken, it had something to do with tourism. I could be wrong; I was young when they changed the name, so I'm not really sure, but that should definitely be included in the article. Skillz187 02:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Check out what I found, "On November 13, 1997 voters changed the name of the county from Dade to Miami-Dade to acknowledge the international name recognition of Miami."[1] I guess that settles the mystery. Skillz187

[edit] 2007 government form change?

I've read that Miami-Dade had a change in its form of government in January 2007. Does this page reflect that change? There is talk about a change in 1992, but the more recent one appears to have stirred up quite a lot of press, so it should be addressed (by someone who knows what happened!)Geoffwithers 17:15, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History

The history section needs work. I found a PDF from the official Miami-Dade site claiming that the County was was created January 18, 1836. Also, it has wonderful information on the county.[2].Skillz187 18:42, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Square Miles

I think the square miles figure is way off.... Somebody ought to check that out. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.156.2.190 (talk) 02:13, 21 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Condensing lists

29-Sep-2007: Some lists in the "Miami-Dade" article are displayed too long on the page. Also, the article failed the GA-review in January 2007 due to excessive information bundled together as "Cities...public schools". A simple way to condense an old (unchanging) list is to string several names together on each line, splitting lines semi-alphabetically, such as putting "C" entries on a line, but also combining "J/K" on one line. Names can still be spotted quickly, due to the alphabetical split. I will condense the long list of unincorporated areas into just 12 lines, grouped as a semi-alpha split. Even when new entries are later added to a list, the update merely involves splitting the lines, such as creating 2 lines of "C" entries. -Wikid77 17:29, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

  • Okay, I see now, that the list of unincorporated areas was already condensed into a wiki-table ("{|...|}") spanning 4 columns. I have condensed the towns list (in the prior section) to similarly have 4 columns at the bottom, which removes 4 lines, and then added the note "(Lettered areas listed below)" noting the subsequent list of unincorporated areas. Using wiki-tables produced clearer lists than my plan above for using semi-alpha split lines. -Wikid77 05:38, 30 September 2007

[edit] Magnifying maps

29-Sep-2007: Large, unreadable maps are a rampant problem in Wikipedia, because many maps across the Internet are designed to be huge, like fan-folded roadmaps with tiny lettering. If possible to edit a map, increase font-size of major names to have letters with 1 pixel-thickness for each 200px of map/image width: a 600px-wide image should have lettering 3-pixels thick, or at least "2.5" pixels, with 2 solid pixels + a gray-shade pixel in the lettering. Labels that are only 2-pixels thick on a 600px-wide image become fuzzy, blurred and almost invisible when the image is reduced below 300px width. Most maps out there use the tiny, thin lettering for almost everything, so most maps are thumbnailing with only one word visible and must be edited to enlarge labels. An easy enlargement fix is to crop the map edges, trimming a map to be much less than 600px wide (before resizing), so the cropped image will cause magnified lettering. Rule of thumb: barely readable text can often be clarified by cropping a map only 20% from the left/right edges. A simple trick is to split a wide map in half, as west-side and east-side sections, to quickly double the readability in each half. (Honestly, image-display links should allow a "viewport" zoom-in focus on part of any image, but such an obvious high-tech solution ain't happening anytime soon.)

In general, maps are a hot-topic for debate, because local people don't need to see a map at all, and many articles are expanded by the local people, frustrated at a map in their way; however, newcomers thrive when maps are readable, so perhaps move larger maps near the bottom of an article, where newcomers could still find them. Otherwise, ENLARGE major labels to appear big, when thumbnailed on a tiny map, that local people can skim past. A large annotated map is better when separated as a total image-description page, with multiple paragraphs of explanatory text there, even though explaining a map in an article might, at first, seem a logical way to illustrate major places found on the map. In reality, large maps are rejected by many wiki editors, causing the need for articles of the form "Map of Minnesota" where the concept is obvious that maps, inside the article, will be huge, with the side comments explaining nearby map details. I cannot emphasize enough that many people detest large images in articles, dreaming back to a "wordipedia" containing only words. -Wikid77 17:29, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Great article

This is a fine Wikipedia article. I wish it won that nomination from January for Good Article. Who are the major contributors for this? Do the other users here think the article has been refined enough for another nomination? - Cyborg Ninja 02:28, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sport section

You are missing the Florida Panthers and the Bankatlantic Centre in the sport section —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.82.91.177 (talk) 03:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:FIRELOGO.gif

Image:FIRELOGO.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 20:13, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Demographic

User Comayagua99 keeps adding strange and odd information, such as the "census 2006" in the Demographic section. These numbers are completely off. thanks. Dwilso 16:11, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Those are the 2006 US Census estimates, what's strange and odd about that? Here's the link to the census estimates numbers. [3] --Comayagua99 (talk) 16:33, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
yes, those template are hard to understand, I highly doubt that miami is 80% caucasian, but thanks anyway. Dwilso 16:53, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Hispanic is not a race, it's an ethnicity. As such, most Hispanics in Miami are white, it's all in the data in the link I posted. --Comayagua99 (talk) 17:04, 29 April 2008 (UTC)