Talk:South Ripley, Queensland

Suburb vs locality or is it a more complicated story to tell

@Bgtips1001: The Queensland Place Names database is the official list of place names and their feature type (bounded locality in the case of South Ripley while Ripley is a suburb). It seems this database is receiving guidance by the local councils, because you see different practices in different local government areas. For example, in Toowoomba Region, there are officially no suburbs, as everything is designated as a bounded locality. In such circumstances, when writing about places in Toowoomba I usually say "residential locality" and "rural locality" to be truthful to both the official feature type (as that is cited) but also to indicate the land use which can be cited against any aerial imagery if needed. In contrast, in the QPN, the City of Ipswich has a mixture of suburbs and localities, which do reflect the actual land use. When I look at the aerial imagery in both Queensland Globe and Google Maps for South Ripley (both of which appear to be dated 2021), the only residential area developed so far is in the far north-east of the locality near the school. Of the 50 km2 of the locality, only about 3-4 km2 appears to be residential (including the school). I did not consider the population figures precisely because this is a developing area. Given that 50 km2 is much larger than suburbs of Ipswich typically are, I suspect that, as residential development increases in the north of the locality, it is likely to be split into two or more smaller suburbs and localities. The Ipswich City Council document you cite uses different terminology "Division 1 is the largest of the four divisions and amalgamates both rural and urban suburbs" but, when it lists those "suburbs" in Division 1, it does not indicate which it regards as "rural" suburbs and which it regards as "urban" suburbs, so we really don't know what the ICC considers South Ripley to be. This is one of those situations where we probably have to use more words to tell the full story, which is that the area is historically a rural locality but now has a residential subdivision in the north of the locality as part of Ecco Ripley with further suburban development expected in the coming years. However, it's difficult to cite anything about the future development from the Ecco Ripley website because it's just a real estate sales site (there isn't even a map!), but this Qld Govt document does have maps (see pages 4 and 20 of the PDF for the best ones for our purposes) which does show that much (but not all) of South Ripley (on its present boundaries) will eventually (by 2031 says the document) be developed for residential use as part of the Ripley Valley Priority Development Area. So I think it's possible to stay truthful to the sources but have the reader understand what's going on. Does this work for you? Kerry (talk) 22:27, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi, Kerry, I didn't get a chance to read this until now. Thank you for explaining the terminology and providing examples. Even though Google Maps says 2021, it's possibly the copyright date as I've notice that some buildings that were constructed before 2021 are not visible. The QLD Globe maps I looked at seem to also pre-date 2021, though are more up-to-date than Google Maps. I retained both locality and suburb as the residential part is quite a significant settlement now with a large High School. 'Locality' has rural connotations and Bureau of Statistics refers to the bounded locality as a state suburb. Retaining both should cover all bases until there are updates on the status of South Ripley for the time being.

The article is a bit bare-bones, so I'll look into updating that when I can.Bgtips1001 (talk) 00:13, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I have no particularly useful expertise here, besides noting that locality is increasingly used for both rural and metro places, but I just wanted to add that the ABS calls every locality a "state suburb", even far-flung outback places as long they're populated, so that's not really useful guidance in this situation. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:54, 18 July 2021 (UTC)