Talk:Prospect Hill Historic District (New Haven, Connecticut)

removed text

I removed:

"The historic district covers most of the residential portion of the Prospect Hill neighborhood."

in favor of, instead:

"The historic district includes part of New Haven's Prospect Hill neighborhood."

I do this because I believe the first version is unsourced and not reliable, not encyclopedic. As discussed at Talk:Prospect Hill (New Haven) and elsewhere, what is meant by the Prospect Hill neighborhood is amorphous. If what is meant is the official New Haven neighborhood, which is very large, i believe the statement may actually be false, or at least it is not very clearly true. If what is meant is some other definition of neighborhood, then that needs to be defined with sources in mainspace. Otherwise having this sentence in seems to be part of a long-running argument, and seems not to be about serving readers. --doncram (talk) 18:56, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Why do this when it is obviously true. This is all the more reason for merging. --Polaron | Talk 19:06, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah, now I remember one other problem with initial sentence, that it was obscuring fact that the historic district spans two New Haven official neighborhoods. I believe that some time ago i deferred somewhat towards P's wish to generally equate the HD with the Prospect Hill neighborhood, and avoid mention of it extending into the Dixwell neighborhood. Well, it's simplest just to tell the straight, sourced truth and nothing but the straight, sourced truth, so i have revised the lede again to mention both neighborhoods. I can't keep track of compromises and half-truths, no offense meant. --doncram (talk) 20:55, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

It is that way because your version makes it look like the two neighborhoods are equal. The quirk of the boundary of the neighborhood planning area is mentioned in a later section. --Polaron | Talk 20:58, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

It is straightforward and accurate to state that the HD is in 2 neighborhoods. Please suggest here some other wording that gives the correct impression, if you like. Get it right in the first sentence. That other section you refer to is not really part of the article, it is really there to hold unrelated reflections of argument here, not useful to the reader.

But that's a quirk of the boundaries. The version I had stated that the historic district encompasses most of the Prospect Hill neighborhood (true). It does not state that it excludes others. It is much neater to not mention Dixwell in the lead as less than 6 acres / 3% of the historic district is in the other neighborhood. The historic district is a much better definition of the neighborhood than the city plan department's. --Polaron | Talk 21:10, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, P, for creating the map inserted above. I just modified the wording on its description page a bit. How do you get the acreage and/or percentages of areas, for example the size of the portion in Dixwell? I understand the areas of the HDs are reported in the NRIS database and the NRHP nom docs, but not where to find the acreage of the official neighborhood area or how to find the Dixwell portion. It would certainly be relevant to report acreage of the New Haven planning areas in the neighborhood articles. Thanks again for the helpful map. --doncram (talk) 02:43, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

It's an estimate from lot sizes (which I assumed were rectangles) on the tax assessor's maps. If you really need accurate figures to the square foot, one can check the tax assessor's database. --Polaron | Talk 05:11, 5 May 2010 (UTC)