Talk:Western Washington

definition?

The article starts with "Western Washington is a region of the United States defined as the area of Washington state west of the Cascade Mountains." Can someone provide a citation for this claim? Who gets to define such a thing? Who "defines" Western Washington? Doctormatt (talk) 02:28, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

The term is widely understood to be the state west of the Cascades crest. Here's a 1917 text that plainly states The State of Washington comprises two distinct regions: Western Washington...and Eastern Washington...the Cascade range of mountains...divides the two. I found a 1920s geography textbook that confirms this, maybe a newer text would make a good citation. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:40, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks for looking into this. It does not seem to me that Western Washington needs its own article; the region is covered well in Washington. Cheers! DoctorMatt (talk) 05:29, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Another early 20th century textbook, Essentials of Geography – probably the one I was thinking of before – clearly delineates Eastern and Western Washington. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:06, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Major cities

What qualifies a city to be listed in the "cities of note" section, beginning with the words "major cities..."? I see Shelton and Port Townsend, both with pop a tad over 10,000, but not Redmond, over 70,000 nor Kirkland, over 90,000, nor Kent, over 100,000; this seems not right. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:33, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree; this is not well done. I'm unsure about the entire article; as I commented above, I don't know who decides what "Western Washington" is, so it is not clear to me that Western Washington warrants an article.

For the "cities of note" section, we could just make it cities with greater than X population, for some X to be stated in the article. As it is, the list is clearly too arbitrary and opinion-based. Cheers! DoctorMatt (talk) 21:10, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

There should be a minimum of one entry per county (usually the county seat) in addition to meeting a population threshold. It's hard to argue that a city like Lake Stevens (35K) is more regionally significant than a county seat like Aberdeen (17K) just because it has more people. SounderBruce 05:52, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

If we use 75,000 as a cutoff, then using US Census July 1, 2023 data [1], we have the following cities plus other county seats by Bruce's formulation:

• Auburn
• Bellevue
• Bellingham
• Everett
• Federal Way
• Kent
• Kirkland
• Redmond
• Renton
• Seattle
• Tacoma
• Vancouver

Lowering the cutoff to 60,000 adds:

• Lakewood
• Marysville
• Sammamish
• Shoreline

Lowering the cutoff to 50,000 adds:

• Bothell
• Burien
• Lacey
• Olympia (Thurston County seat and state capital)

County seats not on any list above include:

• Port Angeles (Clallam County)
• Kelso (Cowlitz County)
• Montesano (Grays Harbor County)
• Coupeville (Island County)
• Port Townsend (Jefferson County)
• Port Orchard (Kitsap County)
• Chehalis (Lewis County)
• Shelton (Mason County)
• South Bend (Pacific County)
• Friday Harbor (San Juan County)
• Mount Vernon (Skagit County)
• Stevenson (Skamania County)
• Cathlamet (Wahkiakum County)

Maybe one of these lists could be the basis? The 75,000 threshold plus Olympia actually looks pretty good to me. Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater agglomeration has pop 141,298 which is qualifying in addition to being the state capital. Adding the other 13 county seats makes the list a little large and they are generally obscure places IMO – despite having visited all of them at least once, with the possible exception of Cathlamet – but I'm persuadable. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:38, 18 June 2024 (UTC)