Talk:Municipalities of Puerto Rico/Archive 1

Archive 1

Making a better list of municipalities

I just started making a more organized and detailed list of Puerto Rico's municipalities. It is similar to most U.S. county lists, like this one, without the "county seat" column. Since Puerto Rico has a lot of municipalities, please add on to the list if you have the time.

I cited the sources that I am using for the FIPS code, Area, and Population columns at the top of the table. For the Established and History columns, I got the information directly from each municipality's Wikipedia article (some of those articles lack references), and I got the mayors and their political affiliations from the list directly below the table.

If you finish the new list, you can delete the one below, since all of the mayors and political affiliations will be listed in the table. —Reelcheeper (talk) 17:52, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Excellent idea. However, I removed History, Mayor and Political Affiliation columns as they don't belong there. History of a municipality, for one, could not be justly summarized in just one phrase. Mayor, unlike square area, year of founding, etc, is not a static attribute of a municipality. Political Affiliation is not an attribute of the municipality but of the mayor that happens to be in power at the time.

Also, I noticed that the rational you used to create the table ("started a municipality list that is similar to U.S. county lists") is inconsistent with the table you created, as other U.S. states county lists (example: New Jersey) do not include these three (History, Mayor (or, County Chairperson) and Political Affiliation) in their articles. Question: what source are you using for the year of foundation of the munucipalities? That could be a point of contention if citations are not included. Regards, Mercy11 (talk) 18:35, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

For the foundation years, I have just been looking at the individual municipalities' articles (like this one). Most of them have the foundation year in the infobox at the top of the page or in the History section of the page. Very few of these articles have a source for the foundation year, but I'm sure I could find one if necessary.

Also, I understand what you're saying about how the Mayor and Political Affiliation columns aren't attributes of the municipalities, but if the mayors and political affiliations were incorporated into the new list and the list below was deleted, it would save a lot of space and make the page more easy to navigate. —Reelcheeper (talk) 20:53, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I left the list of mayors and affiliations intact before pending comment from other editors. I have now removed it for 2 reasons: (1) I agree with you it makes the article shorter, and (2) this is an -article- about municipalities, not a -list- of municipalities. We could always create a list-of-municipalities article if there was interest. Regards, Mercy11 (talk) 14:27, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Racial composition of municipalities Table

There is something inherently wrong with the numbers in this table. For instance, if these are percentages, how come the numbers across each row do not add up to 100% (or say, to 99.9, to provide for rounding)? Not enough citations are given to verify these statistics. Equally problematic, at least one of the citations given leads to a broken link, (it has been broken since the infomation was added on 4 May 2012). My name is Mercy11 (talk) 22:57, 5 May 2012 (UTC), and I approve this message.

Are the municipalities incorporated (Wikipedia) or not (U.S. Census Bureau)?

According to:

• "Puerto Rico: 2010 -- Summary Population and Housing Characteristics -- 2010 Census of Population and Housing", issued September 2012 by the U.S. Census Bureau

which points you to "Selected Appendixes: 2010 -- Summary Population and Housing Characteristics -- 2010 Census of Population and Housing", issued May 2012 by the U.S. Census Bureau on page A-22:

• "There are no incorporated places in Puerto Rico; instead, the Census Bureau provides data for two types of census designated places (CDPs): zonas urbanas, representing the governmental center of each municipio, and comunidades, representing other settlements."

This appears to be in direct conflict with what is currently (Nov 8, 2017) stated on this Wikipedia article ("Municipalities of Puerto Rico"):

• "The municipalities of Puerto Rico number seventy-eight incorporated towns and cities."

Am I not understanding what the Wikipedia article is claiming? It seems to me that the only way for both the U.S. Census Bureau and Wikipedia to be correct is either:

• Incorporation of the municipios in Puerto Rico might have occurred after the referenced Census Bureau document was published in 2012, or,
• Puerto Rico has indeed incorporated the municipios -- Puerto Rico devolved power to the municipios where each is led by an elected mayor -- but the Census Bureau has not recognized this for some technical reason.

Any thoughts?

IceCreamForEveryone (talk) 15:45, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

• @IceCreamForEveryone: It depends on the definition you use of 'incorporated.' The U.S. Census Bureau might be using an American parlance that does not apply to Puerto Rico. I suspect that since there are not counties on the island, the Bureau incorrectly concluded that municipalities should thus be unincorporated. In reality, however, all Puerto Rican municipalities were granted governmental powers by the Autonomous Municipalities Act of 1991. Furthermore, all municipalities provide public services, have an elected mayor, have an elected municipal legislature, and are recognized by the state as subnational governmental entities. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 17:51, 8 November 2017 (UTC)