Talk:Neighborhoods in Boston, Massachusetts
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It is requested that a map or maps be included in this article to improve its quality. Wikipedians in Massachusetts may be able to help! |
The article would really benefit from a map, even if it showed fuzzy boundaries. -- Beland 15:10, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Some sources:
- ZIP code boundaries follow neighborhood boundaries in many cases, and would be useful to distinguish e.g. Allston from Brighton. I see proprietary ZIP code maps are at: http://maps.huge.info/zip.htm
- http://www.schoolyards.org/sites.htm is a good map, though it does not distinguish Beacon Hill, the Back Bay, Chinatown, and the West End
- https://ssl.opendoor.com/RoommateCo/newforms/cityofbostonmap.html is another good map, which shows the West End and the downtown-Back Bay boundary, but it lumps things together in other places.
- Residential parking permit zones are fairly canonical, but I can't find a map for this program. [1]
- U.S. census data might have some appropriate polygons, but I'm not sure.
-- Beland 17:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
- Well, we have a map now, but it's not as clear as some of the other maps of Boston neighborhoods you can find on the Web. The fine lines in our map appear to be major streets, rather than neighborhood boundaries. It looks like it's pretty hard for anyone not already familiar with the subject to figure out the map. -- Beland 04:49, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
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- The map could certainly be improved, but it was unreadable as a thumbnail. I made it a bit bigger, which didn't overlap well with the {column} that the neighborhood list was in, so I took out the column markup. I'm not sure why there was a one-column {column} there anyway. —johndburger 02:46, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Sourced lists
I have a paper brochure I got yesterday from City Hall, titled "City of Boston Transportation Department Resident Permit Parking Program". It lists the city's parking districts as:
- Allston/Brighton
- Back Bay
- Bay Village
- Beacon Hill
- Charlestown
- Chinatown
- Dorchester
- East Boston
- Fenway/Kenmore
- Hyde Park
- Jamaica Plain
- Leather District
- Mission Hill
- North End
- Roslindale
- Roxbury
- South Boston
- South End
- West Roxbury
There is no map. Some neighborhoods might not have resident-only areas, and so might not be listed. -- Beland 14:40, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
- The BRA [2] lists the same neighborhoods, adding Downtown and Mattapan and combining some other with slashes.
- The City of Boston website [3] lists the same neighborhoods, adding Downtown and Mattapan and "Mid Dorchester", and omitting the Leather District. -- Beland (talk) 20:56, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
The U.S. Postal Service recognizes the following place names in Boston ZIP codes:
- Allston
- Boston
- Boston University
- Brighton
- Charlestown
- Dorchester
- Dorchester Center
- East Boston
- Grove Hall
- Hyde Park
- Jamaica Plain
- Kenmore
- Mattapan
- Mission Hill
- Readville
- Roslindale
- Roxbury
- Roxbury Crossing
- Soldiers Field
- South Boston
- Uphams Corner
- West Roxbury
[edit] Park Square
Apparently Park Square (Boston) is not part of the Back Bay nor Bay Village. Is it a part of the Theatre District, or is it its own neighborhood? -- Beland 01:11, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Criticism
This page needs some going over. It sounds like it was written by someone who doesn't have personal knowledge of Boston. No offence to the author, who took the trouble to write it up, but Hispanics and Asians moved into East Boston in large numbers years ago - it's probably been 25-30 years since it was solidly Italian. I'll try to go over it when I get some time. MarkinBoston 03:44, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Neighborhoods?
One big problem with this page is that the "Neighborhoods" aren't really neighborhoods at all. Yet even the city itself uses the term, as cited in the city web page linked at the bottom of this article. West Roxbury is not a neighborhood, it's a region. Same with Dorchester, Mattapan, etc. A neighborhood is the place your neighbors live - the blocks around your house where you get to know people. Residents of Savin Hill and Franklin Field are not neighbors - they may never meet each other in their entire lives. Properly used, "the neighborhoods" are the residential areas outside of the downtown business district. Those neighborhoods are "in" Jamaica Plain and Roslindale, rather than "being" JP and Rosi. Neighborhoods in Boston may be a reasonable subject for a Wiki page, but I think a total revision is required, rather than a piecemeal editing.MarkinBoston 04:31, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
- "A neighborhood is the place your neighbors live" is only one definition; some of the sources I list above don't seem to agree with it. Neither do I; I consider my neighborhood to be Brighton, even though I'm only really neighbors with people in Cleveland Circle. Perhaps there's a more neutral term that could be used instead, but "neighborhood" is used by many other articles that describe the unofficial subparts of an American municipality, regardless of scale. -- Beland (talk) 21:54, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Call for discussion
If no one protests, I'll be removing some of the entries. Government Center is not a neighborhood under any definition of the word. Nor is/was the Combat Zone, Downtown Crossing, or the Theatre District. Speak now, or forever hold your peas. MarkinBoston 01:48, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I removed the non-resident districts. If you have no neighbors, you can't be in a neighborhood. MarkinBoston 17:31, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
- I would have no problem with someone asserting the existence of a commercial or industrial neighborhood; different people have different definitions for that word. The point of this article is to document the internal geography of the city, not to list only certain entities that meet a narrow criterion - there isn't a clear universal criterion to use. Some of the sourced lists I've supplied certainly mention downtown, and various sources do use the other names to refer to parts of Boston (and we have articles on most of them). -- Beland (talk) 20:19, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Confusion
This article, Template:Boston neighborhoods, and Category:Neighborhoods in Boston, Massachusetts, all appear to have different opinions over what constitutes a neighborhood in Boston. Can anyone from the area clear this up? Sbacle 13:51, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
- There's no official definition of "neighborhood", so there's no canonical list. Some of the neighborhoods that are listed in the category are small parts of the larger neighborhoods that are listed in the template, which seems fine to me. I annotated the list in this article to more clearly lay out these relationships. -- Beland (talk) 21:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Wikis
Are there any significant wikis devoted to any or all of these neighborhoods of Boston, or to Boston or Greater Boston as a whole? -69.87.203.103 (talk) 15:18, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
