Category talk:Suburbs of Melbourne
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Definition
editThe Melway take on the official definition of a Melbourne suburb:
An identifiable entity as part of an urban area, that is comparable to existing suburbs, which has defined limits. This is taken to be a sub-unit of a metropolis.
I have had a look at this in relation to the 2005 Urban Growth Boundary (2030) here and here, which has revealed a simple situation delimiting the Melbourne metropolis and the Melton, Sunbury and Hastings enclaves.
All bounded localities within the UGB line now have some urban development and are clearly suburbs; no localities outside line and contiguous with localities inside the line have any urban development and are just as clearly not suburbs.
There are discrete urban areas within the Greater Melbourne area (the outer lines on the maps) beyond the metropolis but these are towns or townships, not suburbs (eg Warburton. Most of the bounded localities of the shires of Yarra Ranges, Cardinia and Melton are rural.
A couple of grey areas: Doreen w/in Whittlesea Shire is urban; w/in Nillumbik Shire is rural, but this just requires a note in the suburb article. Wollert is partly w/in the line and has urban development and is thus a suburb, although the urban area will likely be renamed and what will then be left of Wollert will revert to a rural locality.
There exists a list of 292 Melbourne suburbs but this is apparently not official being a newspaper sub-editors' checklist and excludes the Sunbury, Melton, Hastings and the Mornington-Portsea suburbs.
If the definition I propose is accepted this will introduce precision into this category; a few entries will need to be removed, a couple added, a note added to the category page and a tweak to List of Melbourne suburbs to distinguish which are not, by our definition, suburbs. If we can reach agreement on this, consider the job done.
There is a 2010 proposal to extend the UGB here but this remains subject to discussion and is something for the future the should it eventuate; Rockbank would then become a suburb, whilst now it is paddocks full of rocks (Crusoe8181 (talk) 12:01, 12 April 2010 (UTC)).