3 ms·

>Indeed, the article complains about names 'just being made up' Unlike all those other placenames like "South of Market" which were decreed by god when he crea

>Indeed, the article complains about names 'just being made up' Unlike all those other placenames like "South of Market" which were decreed by god when he created San Fransisco :P What they're really getting at is that it was made up by the wrong people. Like anything else that once happened organically among groups of people, you can now wrangle up an advertising budget and push it along. My neighborhood has a "real" neighborhood name and a silly sub-neighborhood name that gets brought up once a year for a block party. If real estate developers thought the name was valuable, I bet it would mysteriously become a lot more popular.

mjevans 8y ago
That's more an issue of how US society is presently structured. Money (spent) IS speech. Want to speak more or louder? Spend more money. True, community efforts to agree socially on something also matter, but it takes much more social capital than it does cash capital to affect such changes.
jonas21 8y ago
From the article: > In San Francisco, the East Cut name originated from a neighborhood nonprofit group that residents voted to create in 2015 to clean and secure the area. How are these the "wrong" people to be naming the neighborhood?
ghaff 8y ago
One of the cities I’m most familiar with (Cambridge) has a set of neighborhood names and boundaries that a lot of people would more or less agree with. But they’re by no means canonical and not all the boundaries are especially rigid. Plus there are plenty of sub-neighborhood names that do get used but don’t really define any meaningful community or other enclave. Some cities do seem to take a more active role in defining official neighborhoods but many don’t.
ZainRiz 8y ago
It's funny how the article simultaneously complains about using the "wrong" name for East Cut while also saying that the same area has three other names the locals know it by. It seems like no one agrees on the official name

mjevans 8y ago

That's more an issue of how US society is presently structured. Money (spent) IS speech. Want to speak more or louder? Spend more money. True, community efforts to agree socially on something also matter, but it takes much more social capital than it does cash capital to affect such changes.

jonas21 8y ago

From the article: > In San Francisco, the East Cut name originated from a neighborhood nonprofit group that residents voted to create in 2015 to clean and secure the area. How are these the "wrong" people to be naming the neighborhood?

ghaff 8y ago

One of the cities I’m most familiar with (Cambridge) has a set of neighborhood names and boundaries that a lot of people would more or less agree with. But they’re by no means canonical and not all the boundaries are especially rigid. Plus there are plenty of sub-neighborhood names that do get used but don’t really define any meaningful community or other enclave. Some cities do seem to take a more active role in defining official neighborhoods but many don’t.

ZainRiz 8y ago

It's funny how the article simultaneously complains about using the "wrong" name for East Cut while also saying that the same area has three other names the locals know it by. It seems like no one agrees on the official name