Talk:List of cities and towns in Croatia

city vs. town

What do you think about the idea that here only the real cities should be listed? For instance, more then 10 000 or 50 000 inhabitants (there are only 3 bigger then 100 000 in Croatia)? Others should go to the list_of_towns_in_Croatia, and also categories should be conseqently updated? --Mestric 00:26, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The idea sprung to my mind more often than not when I saw the categories, but that's on shaky ground because the Croatian law does not distinguish in any consistent way between towns and cities, AFAIK. Meaning that any such division would be fairly arbitrary and prone to cause protest from people inhabiting cities just below the cutoff. --Joy [shallot] 17:41, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Later I found that the 10K limit is applied in the application process, so I split up the categories into Category:Cities in Croatia and Category:Towns in Croatia based on that principle. --Joy [shallot] 09:45, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

... but I think the list should remain in one single article. --Joy [shallot]

Hello, I just logged on and would like to contribute in the category of cities/towns in Croatia. I think it needs some cleanup, and would love to discuss before some work is done. At the present, small places like Kastav, Nin or Trilj are listed under the category "cities", together with Zagreb, Split and Rijeka. On the other hand, under "towns" we find both Opatija and Vugrovec, Daruvar and Gunja.... This is quite confusing, and also incorrect (just take a look at definitions of city and town). My suggestion is that we rename the Category:Cities in Croatia into "Cities and towns in Croatia". Only places with a status of "grad" would be listed here. According to the same principle, Category:Towns in Croatia would be renamed into "Municipalities of Croatia" and places with a status of "općina" would be listed here. I would also suggest that "List of cities in Croatia" be renamed into "List of cities and towns in Croatia". What do you think? --N.Noel 07:27, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

There needs to be a collective page explaining the differences between Municipalities (Opcina), Towns (Grad), and Settlements (Naselje), and then correcting titles of individual settlements accordingly. There Municipalities and Towns are the lowest unit of local government, and settlements are basically what we'd called census-designated places here in the United States. Settlements have no government their own, and are used by the census organization for statistical purposes. However Towns and Municipalities do function as local units of governments with Towns (pretty much equivalent to a description of a "city") being larger, and Municipalities (pretty much equivalent to a drescription of an American "township") being smaller, usually. --Criticalthinker 04:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

incomplete list?

The heading says there are 122 cities, but we don't actually have that many listed. I recall getting the number from some government web site; we should probably cross-reference the actual list with a government source. --Joy [shallot] 09:47, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

U hrvatskoj postoji 123 grad, 2003 Vodnjan je proglašen gradom. Andrej Šalov 19:24, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Dodao sam kompletnu (ispravnu) listu hrvatskih gradova. Andrej Šalov 18:12, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

OVO NISU TOČNI PODACI O STANOVNIŠTVU I LOŠE JE NAPISANO. ZA ZAGREB SE UZIMAJU NEKE PRETPOSTAVKE, ZA DRUGE GRADOVE SLUŽBENI BROJ S POPISA IZ 2001., A NE ZNAM SAMO ODAKLE OVA INFORMACIJA ZA KARLOVAC? TAJ GRAD JE 2001. GODINE IMAO 59 395. STANOVNIKA. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.138.67.50 (talk) 13:22, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

PLEASE can anyone help. For almost all the pages to cities in the former Yugoslavia, there is a section on demographics from 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, etc. However only for Croatian cities this information seems to be missing. I have been looking all over the internet for information on the 1991 census but am unable to find it. I think it is highly relevant because it shows the ethnic distribution of cities in Croatia immediately before the war broke out. The census was carried in March of 1991 in Croatia, in accordance to the overall population census in Yugoslavia at that time. Even the statistical office of Croatia does not have the 1991 census available to download on its site. Does anybody know where I can find this information? Yugo91aesop (talk) 03:29, 10 November 2009 (UTC)yugo91aesop

Towns and cities

I am confident that terms town and city must be distinguished, even though the two are normally translated as grad into Croatian language. The point is that English language most definitely makes a distinction between the terms and this is English language wiki. A city is an urban settlement which has been granted some special rights (by legislation or otherwise), while a town, even though it is an urban settlement has no such special rights - in Croatian circumstances those are rights to a greater degree of self-government.

For instance Kutjevo became a city in 2006 and at that moment some of self-governing authority passed from Požega-Slavonia County to the newly declared city (until that moment it was a municipality). In terms of type of settlement nothing changes at such times, i.e. Kutjevo, Sveta Nedelja etc. certainly were not villages prior to 2006 - they were towns. The only thing that happened was they were granted new rights, and in English that fits to distinction between towns and cities.--Tomobe03 (talk) 15:12, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

The articles on city and town are pretty clear in that there is no reliable established difference between the two, e.g. the difference between a city and a town is purely the size, and the cutoff points used to distinguish between the two vary greatly in various countries. This article and the corresponding Category:Cities and towns in Croatia are concerned only with administrative units known as grad, regardless of the their urbanistic features or size, and that is precisely the reason why the somewhat clumsy "city/town" term should be used. There's no doubt that there are some small towns (urbanistically) in Croatia which are nevertheless regarded as municipalities, just as there are many grads which look much more like villages than actual towns. Calling Kutjevo (pop. 7,472) or Vrlika (pop. 2,705) "cities" based on their legal status would simply be misleading, and calling anything a "town" which is not a grad simply does not belong to the article which discusses a finite and clearly defined set of settlements which have been legally classified as such. Yes, places like Hum are towns in terms of settlement type, but they are not grads and probably never will be. Timbouctou 15:36, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

The same article on towns - pertaining to England (and Australia and the US for a greater part) and List of cities in the United Kingdom - are in line with what I said, and non-English speaking parts of the world are hardly an authority of use of English. I am aware that Kutjevo, Vrlika and the like don't feel like a city, but that's a whole other issue - the titles were dished out to towns which could never fund themselves due to their small size or lack of employment opportunities (and they should fund education and healthcare to name but a two) - the UK has 15 times the population and half as many officially declared cities. The fact that there are towns (due to actual situation there - type, development etc.) which are not grad and grads that look more like villages is just another reason to make the distinction between towns and cities. But on the other hand that's not critical, so I'm not about to press on that, no matter how inaccurate.

On a more important issue - the population figures listed pertain to census-designated areas rather than the settlements themselves. Is this intentionally so? In some cases differences can be dramatic - e.g. in case of Ozalj, the difference is sevenfold. Perhaps we could have both figures?--Tomobe03 (talk) 15:49, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

• The introductory sentence of the town article states that "the size a settlement must be in order to be called a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many American "small towns" seem to British people to be no more than villages, while many British "small towns" would qualify as cities in the United States." Seems to me that not even the English-speaking world is certain of what's the difference between the two.

List of cities in the United Kingdom hints that they do, but let's just leave it as it is... it's not crucial to development of the article...--Tomobe03 (talk) 17:03, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

If you really want to get into what defines a city in the UK, the article on cities says that "in the United Kingdom a city is traditionally a settlement with a royal charter" and adds that "historically, in Europe, a city was understood to be an urban settlement with a cathedral", while the City status in the United Kingdom article leads with the statement that "City status in the United Kingdom is granted by the British monarch to a select group of communities. The holding of city status gives a settlement no special rights other than that of calling itself a "city"." Hence the List of cities in the United Kingdom defines a city as a settlement with a cathedral of the Church of England (before 1888) or a royal charter (since 1888, when it ceased to be a requirement). So what defines a city in the UK has nothing to do with its size or even its administrative rights, and is more of a title in the sense that OBE is a title.

• In line with the whole article which uses the legal definition of the term grad, the population figures used are totals in all settlements (be it hamlets, villages, suburbs, towns, etc) which territorially belong to each grad (e.g. these are NOT census-designated but legally defined areas - whereas "settlements" are just the opposite). However I suppose we might include an additional column with population figures for town settlements, as long as an explanation of what "settlements" are is added. Timbouctou 16:07, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Uh, I meant self-government units - I stand corrected. In keeping with that, the opening sentence of the article has a real potential of confusing the reader as it talks about a settlement, rather than an area centered on a city/town/settlement/whatever. Furthermore, may I suggest replacing "Grad" in the table with "City" to retain the term in the title and "Urban area" or something along those lines instead of "Naselje" (which is likely to be a mystery for anyone looking at the table itself).--Tomobe03 (talk) 17:03, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

• I've added an additional column for settlement population figures and ranked them accordingly. I've also expanded the explanation in the list section of the article to avoid misunderstanding. I've kept the column names as they are because the terms "grad" and "naselje" are now defined, but I'd agree with renaming them into something like "City area" and "City proper" or something along those lines. Also, I've just looked at the Croatian article about općine and gradovi a minute ago and found out that since 2005 a new legal category was introduced called "veliki gradovi" (which I suppose could finally be used to clearly differentiate between "cities" and "towns" for our purposes), probably in imitation of the system that the Germans use (who have the term Großstadt for cities with more than 100,000 citizens). I'll try to track down the Narodne novine issue which talks about this new legislation and see if they included a list of "veliki gradovi" in it. I was unaware of this piece of legislation but if it can be confirmed by finding the Narodne novine issue with the decision than the table could be split to reflect this. Timbouctou 10:27, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• Here's the link to the amendment to the law on local self-government, with "veliki gradovi" mentioned in article 4. The law did not include a list of cities, but this article in Poslovni dnevnik took the 35,000 cutoff point to mean "population within the entire city area" and listed 17 cities as "veliki gradovi". Timbouctou 10:33, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Administration at all levels never ceases to amaze with multitude of remedies for something that isn't really broken while overlooking the obvious yet unpopular fixes. Yea that would make them large cities and uhm, regular ones... But I see no point in making the distinction in the table itself. Btw, one cannot but wonder what is there a difference between a city and a municipality but in the name and a bit more numerous administration now that there are big/large cities.

The list sure improved now. Normally I wouldn't pay this much attention, but I started to tinker with the article at about the same time you started improving the article -- so I was interested a bit more...--Tomobe03 (talk) 10:52, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I think the solution is a kind of combination of geographic and Croatian legal criteria, i.e.: "municipality" is what the Croatian "Local and Regional Self-Government Act" defines as "općina" - usually not urban local self-government unit, it may comprise one or more settlements ("naselja") - not administrative units, used for statistical purposes (census); "town" ("grad") would be units "between municipality and 'big city'" (usually larger not urban or small urban settlements, Croatian abovementioned Act calls them just "grad", which could be translated as "town" and "city"); according to geographic criteria these would be "towns" ("gradovi"); finally "big city" ("veliki grad") is large urban settlement (usually with more suburban settlements), it fits the geographic criteria to be called just "city" and (as "big city") it is a special administrative unit according to Croatian law. A little bit complicated, but ... So: municipality (općina) - town ("grad) - city ("veliki grad"). N.B. All local self-government units may be divided into "local boards" ("mjesni odbori"), while towns and cities may be divided into "city districts" ("gradski kotari") and/or local boards. City of Zagreb, as a capital, is also a county (a "city with county rights", like German "urban district"), divided into city boroughs/districts ("gradske četvrti") which are subdivided into local boards. Local boards may be translated ad "parishes" or "neighbourhouds". These local units (even they are not considered as primary self-government units) do have legal personality, elected council and by the council elected president. Tommy130275 (talk) 17:15, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

the agony

...persists :) The final Census 2011 results are again split by type:

• http://www.dzs.hr/Eng/censuses/census2011/results/htm/E01_06_02/E01_06_02.html
• http://www.dzs.hr/Eng/censuses/census2011/results/htm/E01_06_01/E01_06_01.html

--Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:13, 17 December 2012 (UTC)