Editing Talk:Milton Keynes (section)

== Merge proposal ==
I propose merging [[City of Milton Keynes]] into [[Milton Keynes]]. The content is largely duplicated and it's not standard to have different articles for the local authority and city (e.g. there is no [[City of Birmingham]] article separate to [[Birmingham]]). It doesn't really matter that Milton Keynes contains a few separate towns within the authority area- after all Birmingham also contains separate towns like [[Sutton Coldfield]]. The current layout of having two articles is needlessly cumbersome, forcing readers to go to a different article for information on the economy and demographics. [[User:Chessrat|<b style="color: #c90; font-family: comic sans ms">Chessrat</b>]] <sup>([[User talk:Chessrat|<span style="color:green">talk</span>]], [[Special:Contribs/Chessrat|<span style="color:#f78">contributions</span>]])</sup> 20:42, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

:* '''Oppose''' simply because the argument presented here is unconvincing: it is in fact very normal to have separate articles for a local government district and the settlement that it's named after. Leeds, Lancaster, Stafford, Horsham, Lewes, Swindon, Eastleigh, Winchester, Bedford, Darlington, Southend-on-Sea, Bromsgrove, Hartlepool, Stockton on Tees, Dudley, to name a few. When we don't split is for places where the area of the settlement and the area of the district are generally considered to be the same, which you seem to accept is not the case here. [[User:Steinsky|Joe D]] [[User talk:Steinsky|(t)]] 21:13, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
:* '''Strong oppose'''. 
:** The Borough (formally "City of") is substantially larger than the eponymous urban area. 
:** The comparison with Sutton Coldfield is not useful since SC is part of the Birmingham urban area, like Camden Town in London.
:** [[City of Carlisle]], [[City of Lancaster]] and maybe [[City of York]] are more obvious comparators
:** Milton Keynes has no defined boundaries. It keeps the peace to have Newport Pagnell and Woburn Sands (which are in the [[Milton Keynes urban area]] (as defined by the OS and ONS) declared to be in the City of MK. 
:** The Milton Keynes article is already rather big, we really do not want to make it any bigger to satisfy some misplaced idea of "tidiness".
:** City of MK is that part of Buckinghamshire that is designated as the 'patch' of the [[unitary authority]], [[Milton Keynes City Council]]
:** Legally, city status was awarded to the borough council, not the urban area.
:** Giving each of these aspects its own article makes it far easier to write clearly and unambiguously.
::It is not broken, it doesn't need fixing. [[User:JMF|𝕁𝕄𝔽]] ([[User talk:JMF|talk]]) 21:14, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
:::It is broken when it's not clear what the article is even about at the moment! The article starts with "Milton Keynes is a city" but then has a footnote explaining that the article ''isn't'' about the city under its legally-defined borders. It's also clearly not about the [[Milton Keynes urban area]] because that is a separate article and also contains [[Aspley Guise]] in Bedfordshire. It can't be about the ONS's Milton Keynes Amalgamated Built Up Area because that excludes a lot of the city's parkland which is reported on in this article.
:::The cited area in the infobox sources the original New Town act of 1967- but doesn't that exclude later developments not part of that act that are clearly part of the city now?
:::Ultimately the article as it is currently written is a complete mess and it's nearly impossible to work out how it is defining "Milton Keynes", which seems like a clear [[WP:OR]] violation. No reason not to just use the definition which basically every source uses- the official boundaries of the city of Milton Keynes! If Milton Keynes succeeds in its [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy575y3znz5o city of culture bid], the designation will apply to the actual City of Milton Keynes's boundaries, not some nebulous undefined definition of "Milton Keynes" invented by editors to exclude some areas of it, etc. [[User:Chessrat|<b style="color: #c90; font-family: comic sans ms">Chessrat</b>]] <sup>([[User talk:Chessrat|<span style="color:green">talk</span>]], [[Special:Contribs/Chessrat|<span style="color:#f78">contributions</span>]])</sup> 21:38, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
::::'''Comment''' Following on to this I notice that footnote has ''a'' definition for the topic of this article: "the contiguous urban segment of the City of Milton Keynes local authority area", but that is against [[WP:OR]]- it would mean that the topic of the article includes [[Woburn Sands]] and excludes both [[Aspley Guise]] and [[Sherington]]. This is not a definition used or reported on by any [[WP:RS]]- it is invented by Wikipedia.
::::I didn't even notice that at first; I think the fact that the topic of the article is seemly defined by a definition invented by Wikipedia makes it even more important to carry out a merger and change the scope of the article. [[User:Chessrat|<b style="color: #c90; font-family: comic sans ms">Chessrat</b>]] <sup>([[User talk:Chessrat|<span style="color:green">talk</span>]], [[Special:Contribs/Chessrat|<span style="color:#f78">contributions</span>]])</sup> 21:56, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
:::::If you want to propose changes to this article, then start another discussion topic. This topic is about your merge proposal.  Lat that snowball melt before you throw another one. [[User:JMF|𝕁𝕄𝔽]] ([[User talk:JMF|talk]]) 22:28, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
:* '''Oppose''' Long standing consensus is that the Milton Keynes district and the urban area are distinct and worthy of seperate articles. There are many examples of similar city/urban area article splits which have already been given. [[User:Eopsid|Eopsid]] ([[User talk:Eopsid|talk]]) 22:13, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per above, plenty of articles have both, don't see the rationale as compelling enough for a merge. Birmingham's urban area and the conjoining town covers virtually the entire borough so had to use the borough border, so can't exactly be compared to here. '''[[User:DankJae|<span style="color: black">Dank</span>]][[User talk:DankJae|<span style="color: red">Jae</span>]]''' 00:30, 19 March 2026 (UTC)