Talk:Coimbra Municipality

Confusion about naming

Please, could someone explain to me why we have a long article about the city of Coimbra and another about the municipality of Coimbra, both of them saying basically the same thing. No body outside of Portugal knows Coimbra, or any other Portuguese city or town for that matter, as the Municipality of Coimbra. Wouldn't it be more logical to mention in the main article about the city that it also has a rural area surrounding it, making up the municipal boundaries. The Portuguese are the only ones on Wikipedia who do this with their cities (not all by the way)creating unnecessary confusion in the reader. Vogensen (talk) 09:55, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The existence of an article about the municipality of Coimbra and "city" of Coimbra lies in the interpretation of what a "city" is in the Portuguese context, and the administrative divisions of this State. In a legal context cities, towns and urban settlements have no legal or territorial basis in law, and are reserved for the distribution of services. Or put it simply, Portugal is politically divided into municipalities that may or may not coincide with urbanized settlements. Consequently, there are no "city mayors", "city limits" or "city halls", wherein all these political structures are vested in the municipal authority (the "concelhos"). The "Coimbra" article is more a political fiction then reality, created by editors who hold to the false assumption of what a city is, in the North-American context. I offer an example from my home town: I lived in the "city of Cambridge", which was a incorporated city in municipality of Waterloo, consisting of both rural and urban settlements. The municipal article in the Coimbra context is equivalent to the municipality of Waterloo, while the "city" article of Coimbra, corresponds to the comparable "city of Cambridge". Why shouldn't these articles remain as individual entities? While, although, it may seem confusing because in the context of Coimbra, they use the same name, they are, in fact, distinct entities. The same applies to the other articles created for other "cities" in Portugal.

Further, the tendency of most Portuguese articles (not all) is to distinguish the urbanized city from the political entity. Therefore, the "city" article only includes information associated with the settlement level entity, while the municipality article refers to the historical, geographic, political and social institutions associated with the larger politico-administrative units and its divisions. For example, although the article on the city of Coimbra refers to history and culture of the urbanized portions of the parishes of Almedina, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Santo António dos Olivais, São Bartolomeu and Sé Nova (the "city" of Coimbra), the municipality article is meant to cover information associated with the 31 parishes. You will notice that the influence of the University of Coimbra is reduced to its historical significance in the municipal article, but elaborated in the "city" article, owing to its socio-cultural importance to the "city of Coimbra". Similarly, although there is a list of "native citizens" in the municipal article, it only includes people that were born (or died) in the municipality, and not the hodge-podge of people "living" in Coimbra. There are differences in the articles, and if anything, it just indicates that either article should be edited in order to clarify the differences. Ruben JC (Zeorymer) (talk) 22:20, 28 November 2011 (UTC)