Answers:
FinalCut
Huntington
why not just add a “Greater LA Area” then? Since that is the only part of the state causing problems you can have an LA and a Greater LA Area. Then there is no need for counties per say
mackro
Seattle
The problem with “Greater L.A.” is everyone defines “Greater L.A.” differently.. which is/was the problem with “Southern California”. Counties are more deterministic. They have politically defined borders that can be looked up. Cities are either inside or outside counties, almost all of the time at least. Not so with “Greater Insert-City-Here” generalizations.
FinalCut
Huntington
good point – makes sense.
So I go back to my first comment – put in the most populous counties for now and then add more counties as people show a demand for them.
Of course that could be confusing to a user trying to drill down when they see a bunch of counties but not the one they are looking for.
Is it hard to put the counties in? How many counties would really be left out by being selective?
mackro
Seattle
Your first suggestion sounds best. And if a user didn’t know which county a city/landmark was in, he/she could just enter the name of the city/landmark in the Search box, and the options would show up and point out the hierarchy for him/her.
Getting to the destination isn’t an issue as much as how many users are going to bother using the Search box as opposed to wanting to hyperlink down into a destination. This is more of a higher usability issue specific to the site in general. I’ll defer to the ’bots about this one.
But, as a first pass, creating:
- Los Angeles County
- Ventura County
- San Bernardino County
- Riverside County
…would take care of “Greater L.A.”. Orange County has already been created.
“Greater San Diego” could benefit from this as well with San Diego County. I remember people thinking Chula Vista and National City were San Diego neighborhoods in one S.D. question thread, which created a small argument. For consistency, Imperial County would be created to round out Southern California.
Later on, maybe Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Kern Counties might be created, but I think the locations therein will be alright without them for now.
I want to hear back from others though to make sure this something people would want. Perhaps, it’s best to wait a few days… I’ll send a message to the Bots about this as well.
Note: I do want to stress that I don’t think all of Ventura, San Bernardino, and Riverside Counties make up Greater L.A.! There are certainly large enough populated areas within each of these places that blend into L.A. (Thousand Oaks, Chino, Fontana, Corona, etc.), but I realize that San Bernardino and Riverside counties are huge! The rest of these counties pretty much make up most of the Mojave Desert. So I stress these designations mainly for the cities, and not for the large natural entities as such.
