Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/County of London Plan

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Snow keep. Per the suggestions given below, I am assuming good faith that the notability of the plan is verifiable in offline sources. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:06, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

County of London Plan[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Not a notable document. The article is currently citing itself, rather than any significant or independent news coverage. A search for the document's name turns up copies on Amazon, or people on blogs talking about it, and the odd other cursory mention that just validates its existence and not much else. Fundamentally, though, while the ideas contained within it are probably notable for London's history, and it could be used as a reliable source for those, there doesn't seem to be anything suggesting the actual document itself is particularly notable. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 16:01, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - not much in news, but sufficient coverage can be found via Google Books. Peter James (talk) 23:23, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Whilst much of its proposals were not adopted because of post war austerity, the County of London Plan is a significant document in the planning history of Greater London. The fact that the article lacks citations is not proof that there are none, just that they haven't been put in. They can be easily found and there is plenty of coverage in the newspapers from the period. It also seems strange to consider that the ideas are separable from the document, given that its purpose was to publish the ideas. I don't suggest that it is of the same rank, but we wouldn't suggest that On the Origin of Species or The Communist Manifesto are not important books. I think this should stay.--DavidCane (talk) 23:27, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If there are lots of sources, why has nobody cited them, or at least linked to them? My search for significant news coverage suggests otherwise. I think you're making the mistake of confusing the significance of the document as a source with its notability. Just to clarify, I created the AfD because I wanted to improve the article but couldn't, and if someone can list a couple of good, in depth sources, I'll probably speedy close this. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 05:01, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep This is the Abercrombie plan for London, which as others have indicated is one the most famous examples of urban planning in British history (it should be paired with the Greater London plan of the following year). I do not have access to the right library to refer to the best sources, but a glance at Google books suggests that The County of London Plan explained by E. J. Carter, Ernö Goldfinger, John Henry Forshaw, Sir Patrick Abercrombie, and London County Council, published by Penguin in 1945, or Peter Hall's lecture Abercrombie's plan for London, 50 years on are more than adequate to establish notability and there are plenty of other examples. Improving an article such as this is a challenge - a glance at my bookshelf suggests that the Abercrombie Plan is mentioned in almost every book on the history of London, but it has received so much coverage both at the time and subsequently that one should be selective in choosing cited sources and fairly well immersed in the topic to contribute usefully to the article.

Surely, the fact that it is a frequently cited document is the foundation of notability for Wikipedia's purposes, BTW? We have these articles precisely because people will find passing reference to it and want to know what the source actually said without having to get hold of a copy. --AJHingston (talk) 09:22, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request may be able to offer assistance. Alternatively, I have some colleagues with access to the Times digital archive who may be able to pull out something. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 10:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There will be people around who have studied the Abercrombie report(s) in some depth. A topic as important as this certainly deserves a good article. An understanding of its context and influence would be very helpful to an editor, as well as the content of the report itself which can of course be obtained by reading it. I would certainly not think I was equipped to do that myself. But we need to distinguish between article improvement and the deletion process - as several of us have pointed out it can hardly be said that this is not a notable topic, quite the reverse. --AJHingston (talk) 12:30, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.