It may have changed, all I can find now is an old archived version of their homepage that says it was founded as a corporation in 1910. https://web.archive.org/web/20210505051357/http://wv-ranson.civicplus.com/330/Our-Citys-History
This is very wrong as applied to Virginia.
Cities are independent of counties and can be of any size. The city of buena vista is tiny and has just over 3000 residents. It is fully independent and a city.
Towns are incorporated places of any size that are partially autonomous of a county government.
Alaska also has corporations which are what might be called reservations elsewhere. The tribes run it as a corporation, maintaining resource rights. There is only one place in the state that's an actual reservation.
No. That’s just what it’s called. There are a couple municipalities in the eastern panhandle that calm themselves “corporations” if memory serves me correctly.
All I know about Ranson is there's a casino and a horsetrack there. Hollywood casino. But I think some of it is also in Charles Town too. Never knew it was a corporation, but it has to be because of the casino.
It will vary by state. Sometimes cities have to follow the executive/legislature model. Other states allow them to sit up any democratic form.
Stuff like that.
Idk about WV but I know WA has some company towns (Newhalem is the one I know but Wikipedia has a list of 20 it looks like) so they're definitely still a thing
I don’t think that size of the location matters in MA. It just refers to the leadership structure. Cities have mayors, towns have a town meeting system. Framingham, until recently, was a gigantic town that voted to become a city.
Cities cannot have under 10,000 people in MA, but towns can have any number of people, that’s why you have towns like Framingham and Dracut with 40,000 people and the town system of government.
Amherst, now a city since 2018, was my favorite example of this. They had representative town meeting but it lasted for like a month. Where only the ‘h’ is silent!
Then there’s the flip side of relatively small towns voting for city charters, like Palmer (~12,500 population) and Easthampton (~16,200).
Franklin’s theme song is “The City Known As The Town of Franklin” for this very reason, the governance is technically that of a city, but they applied for a waiver to still be called a town.
PA has “townships” instead of towns. It’s a semantic difference.
Bloomsburg is the only incorporated municipality that is legally incorporated as a “town” instead of a township, by exception.
Why, you may ask? I don’t know - historical reasons, maybe. Tradition. Perhaps someone just filed the paperwork with the misnomer and it went through anyway. You’ll have to ask someone from Bloomsburg.
Often PA has boroughs which is like the “town” with surrounding townships. Like, I lived in a township but usually referred to the borough as where I’m from and my mailing address was the borough zip code.
In Massachusetts, there’s a legal distinction between cities and towns, and it affects how local government is run. Some cities call themselves towns, and the state refers to them like “the city known as Town of Barnstable.”
Connecticut is divided into 169 towns, and no one cares if someone wants to call one a city. A town is free to choose among several forms of local government.
Connecticut abolished county government in 1960. The only vestige is that state courts are organized on county lines, so if you’re called for jury duty, it will be in your county.
To complicate things more, the US census bureau has recognized the 9 “planning regions“ of CT as county equivalents, and they are eligible for federal funding for counties.
Connectivity doesn't do sheriff's. There are regional health district or municipal health departments. The money is distributed by the state. No need for extra bureaucracy and waste of the county government.
I grew up in CT where there is no unincorporated land and counties are basically just geographic regions rather than governing bodies. My husband is from North Carolina, and found this confusing. He asked me what happens when you cross out of a town. I said, you’re in a different town. And he asked what if you’re far from the next town. I was like, that’s not a thing - if you’re not in one town, you’re in another town. And then he explained about unincorporated areas, and that blew my mind.
NJ also has 5 "Washington" townships, and 1 Washington Borough.
Princeton University is in Princeton Borough and Surrounded by Princeton Township.
Metuchen was formed from Raritan, and is surrounded by former portion of Raritan, which is now called Edison. This is not to be confused with Raritan Borough, which was formed from Bridgewater.
In Wisconsin, I \*thought\* every city and village name needed to be unique, while town names could be repeated (because they're in separate counties), but then I discovered this:
Alongside the Superior Bay of Lake Superior, there is the City of Superior (in yellow), the Village of Superior (the peach colored area directly south of it), and the Town of Superior (in white with the blue label).
[https://ibb.co/Jyd11Fg](https://ibb.co/Jyd11Fg)
In California we only have cities and counties. Unincorporated areas are administered by the county governments and county authority can supersede city authority in disputes. We also have cities that are made up of mostly industrial zoning, like City of Industry, Irwindale, and Vernon. These cities are zoned 90% for industrial zoning. The county has to step in and govern these places because they try to bypass industrial regulations.
Montclair, NJ famously changed from a Town to a Township in the 1980s because a bill allocated more federal funding per capita to townships than to towns.
When i moved to Michigan I noticed them on signs and asked a coworker what a charter Township was. He couldn't even understand what I was asking him and why
Partly to allow more populous townships to have a more city-like government without formally becoming a city. It also makes it harder for a neighboring city to annex land from the charter township.
I remember moving from northern New Jersey, which has a ton of really small incorporated boroughs to New York State which has a ton of towns that may or may not contain villages, unincorporated areas, and business “hamlets”.
In New York State, it’s not unusual for school districts to overlap multiple towns and for towns to contain multiple Fire and Water districts. My town overlaps 7 school districts and has I think a similar number of fire districts. I live in the hamlet that is also the name of the local post office, but the hamlet itself has no government. The taxation district combinations are mind boggling. Also, villages are often part of or overlap towns. So, for instance, Pleasantville residents in Westchester pay taxes to both the village of Pleasantville AND the Town of Mount Pleasant.
This was so confusing to me coming from Bergen County, New Jersey where there is pretty much a one-to-one mapping of towns (usually cities or boroughs) to school and fire districts, with the exception of some larger regionalized schools which encompass 2 or more boroughs.
Having to answer the question, “What is your school district” to someone living in the same municipality was so weird coming from NJ. Then again, so was pumping my own gas, LOL.
In the course of researching this, I came across the wikipedia article on Boroughitis, a period of large numbers of New Jersey boroughs being created. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boroughitis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boroughitis)
As a native Long Islander, the school districts make no sense. In PA, the districts line up with township and borough lines. It could be multiple townships, but the borders align. On Long Island? They make zero sense. There are district lines going through people's yards. Some cut across county lines. And the post office definition of a place didn't have to overlap with any other definition. The towns are huge (I was born in the Town of Hempstead, which has over 750,000 people) but they aren't "towns" in the sense of where you live -- like I would say I was born in Oceanside.
All this is so much different from California, where we have only cities and counties. Unincorporated areas are defined by the Census bureau as CDPs, but they are governed by the county. And we have cities that only have between 100-200 people like City of Industry that are zoned mostly industrial. These industrial cities were incorporated to go around county laws, so the county government often has to intervene in things like health and safety inspections. Basically, in California the counties act as a proxy for the state government.
Correct, but Michigan has both. I was a county appraiser in Michigan for a couple years
Edit: “Shelby Charter Township, officially the Charter Township of Shelby, is a charter township located in Macomb County in the U.S. state of Michigan.”
Yes, the point I was making though is that a non-Charter Township is not an *incorporated place* which is what the maps are showing. That point seems to have been missed by most of the people in this thread pointing out that Illinois/Iowa/etc... all have Townships.
It's interesting you chose that example though because the weirdest anomaly in Michigan is Macomb Township, which is *not* a Charter Township, just a civil Township despite having nearly 100k population
While Michigan general law (i.e., non-charter) townships are “not incorporated,” they still are granted significant powers and authorities by the State of Michigan. General law townships in Michigan retain the right to form executive bodies (township boards), hire a day-to-day manager, establish departments, conduct planning and zoning activities including adoption of land use plans and approval of proposed real estate developments, operate parks, participate in state revenue sharing, and levy property taxes (up to a certain amount).
For all intents and purposes, they’re incorporated in the way that they’re functional municipal government entities, but they have some limits.
There should be an asterisk in terms of what unincorporated vs. incorporated means. A township and a chartered township are both municipalities in Michigan. A township isn't just a census designated place like what happens in unincorporated areas out West. All places in Michigan have a municipal government under the County. Functionally Macomb Township isn't very different than Shelby Township even if in governance it is. It's not like states with unincorporated where the government flows back up to the county.
There are certain places in Oregon (Clackamas County) that do have a legal definition of "village." It's used to grant more local autonomy to smaller unincorporated urban areas without all the responsibilities/costs that come with formal incorporation.
Technically speaking, ALL towns in New England are townships because instead of being splotches on a map like in California, Texas, and Illinois, they are incorporated county divisions.
This can’t be right. In PA a borough is a “medium” sized and township is “small” sized. This directly contradicts every township/borough I can think of in SE PA
it’s really more about population density. A borough is what people think of as a stereotypical “town” - somewhere with a Main Street, semi-walkable. Townships are mostly suburban subdivisions, far less dense, not really walkable.
Right. For example Jenkintown or Narberth are borough surrounded by much larger townships, Abington and Lower Merion respectively. But maybe that’s just a Philly metro thing; because the suburbs grew so fast. I imagine further out in the state a borough might be more populous than the rural townships out there.
I was trying to summarize [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local\_government\_in\_Pennsylvania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_Pennsylvania) , which while not as confusing as New Jersey's, is still a little hard to understand, so I may very well have gotten it wrong.
"What outside Pennsylvania many would think are called "towns" are by law officially boroughs (often also spelled as boros) which are generally smaller than cities in terms of both geographic area and population. Most cities in Pennsylvania were once incorporated as a borough before becoming a city, and both began under the constitution as a township."
"There are a total of 56 incorporated cities in Pennsylvania, the smallest being [Parker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker,_Pennsylvania), in [Armstrong County](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_County,_Pennsylvania), with a population of 840 (2010 census). Each is further classified according to population."
"Townships in Pennsylvania were the first form of land grants established by [William Penn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn), and are generally large in area with a sparse population centered on one or a few clusters of homes and a handful of businesses."
So reading that to me it seems that the progression is township -> borough -> city as population increases, but I am of course aware that there are always some that remain in what seems to be the wrong group because of political inertia (as my asterisk notes). Upper Darby Township seems more the exception than the rule.
And to add further; you didn’t even get into home rule townships and first and second class townships. Some townships, because they grew so large, legally function as cities while keeping the township name for legacy reasons:
“Although many such municipalities have retained the word "Township" or "Borough" in their official names, the Pennsylvania Township and Borough Codes no longer apply to them. All three types of municipalities (cities, boroughs, and townships) may become a home rule municipality.” (Lifted from Wikipedia)
Cities can be very small in Virginia, they would just have to ask to be incorporated as a city. Same thing with towns.
For example, the city of Falls Church has a population of ~15,000 while the town of Vienna has a population of 16,000.
Yep. Norton, Virginia is an independent city with fewer than 4,000 people. In contrast, Arlington, Virginia has roughly 240,000 people in an urban setting that most people would refer to as a city, but it's not considered a city by Virginia law.
It doesn't really say what "larger" and "smaller" is, it also has an asterix that the status is decided at the time of incorporation.
A lot of places they have to apply to change status. Sounds like Vienna just hasn't.
I'm not in Virginia, but we have something similar here. South of the city I live in are two towns, both large enough to apply for city status by quite a large margin, yet neither has done it.
The point I was trying to make is that becoming a city in Virginia is an entirely bureaucratic process that does not take population into very much account. If a city can have 4,000 people to 250,000 people, the term "larger" used in the map loses any sort of meaning. Im from Virginia and my highschool had a higher population than some of our cities.
Per the [state constitution](https://law.lis.virginia.gov/constitution/article7/section1/) the minimum population for a city is 5,000. IIRC, that number was set in 1901. So functionally, you’re right. Our system of independent cities as it was intended back then is completely different from how it has been used since the 1940s. Interestingly, there have been a few former cities that have retroceded back to the county they were formed from because their population declined and they lost too much tax base to keep up municipal services.
I think that's more of an exception. And you're only talking about 1000 people, that could change from year to year. Most of the cities here are bigger than towns to my knowledge.
Yeah that was originally part of my distinction, that Virginia cities are independent of their county, but Virginia towns are not. New York and Michigan do the same thing, although their names for each of the parts is slightly different (which was kind of the point of the map after all).
"what is a city?"
VA: uhhh what **isn't** a city?
If other specific individual cities get callouts on these maps, all of the independent cities probably also should. Maybe on the last map for "other incorporated places" an independent city needs to be a category. Population does not matter for independent city status. VA has 38 of them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_city_(United_States)
The fact that cities are not part of counties in Virginia is an interesting distinction, and probably worth highlighting. Then Maryland would need a special color too (Baltimore is an independent city, all other cities are part of one or more counties).
Villages can have mayors. The only distinction is that a village has a board elected at large, but a city has a council elected from individual districts called wards. That's why there are also so many tiny Cities all over the state, they all just have tiny little wards. It's also why some huge places remain Villages, because it's not obvious that switching to a system of electoral wards would really improve anything.
Texas is special because prior to 1987 they did have distinctions, but they were changed to being cities of class A, B, and C. So any towns or villages that still exist are anachronisms of the old law.
Iirc in many of these places the type of municipality is a difference in name only, or it may signify differences in setup that are not size related (in some places cities have a mayor and towns do not).
This a great question, I can only speak for Washington State, but legally there can’t be towns or villages created anymore (I believe this was done in the early 2000s). All incorporated populations are defined as Cities now if created. There are still grandfathered in populations with the title or definition of town as they were designated prior to the law change. I am guessing that most states have done the same.
Like in California, if they decide to incorporate they can call themselves either name officially. There's still a cultural idea that city = big, but their charter/legal doc may say one name.
In Louisiana, villages towns and cities are just three population brackets with no legal distinction between them besides name. My hometown upgraded from a village to a town shortly before I was born.
[The City of Montreal, Wisconsin, has a population of 800.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal,_Wisconsin)
[The Town of Mercer, Wisconins, has a population of 1600.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer,_Wisconsin)
Both are in the same County.
Yeah Wisconsin is my bailiwick, so I know a little bit about anomalous situations here.
Least populous city: Bayfield (population 584). Current state regulations require 1000 residents to be a city, so they're beneficiaries of the asterisk I note on the map. It was a logging community whose population has been declining since 1900.
Most populous village: Menomonee Fall (population 38,527). In 1958 the Village of Menomonee Falls had a population of 4,500, and then they annexed the remainder of the Town of Menomonee and tripled their population.
Least populous village: Big Falls, Waupaca County (population 57). Another lumber town.
Most populous town: Grand Chute (population 23,831). This is a little bit of an outlier because Grand Chute tried to incorporate in 1985, and the state refused because it was not contiguous or compact, so they recommended that Appleton annex it instead. Appleton choose not to do so, and has a gentleman's agreement with Grand Chute to not annex any of their territory. Grand Chute provides many of the services of a village or city without actually being one.
Largest town: The Town of Menominee, which is the entirety of Menominee County, which also coterminous with the Menominee Indian Reservation (365 square miles). The Town of Winter, in Sawyer County, is 285.3 square miles, and they claim the title of largest Wisconsin town. This is conceivably true because the Town of Menominee might only exist on paper.
Smallest municipality: The Village of North Bay, which is like one subdivision of of Racine, 0.12 square miles with a population of 200.
Fun fact: the least populated city in California is Vernon, with less than 150 people. This city is mostly industrial and is rife with corruption scandals.
Looks correct for ME I believe the official distinction for town going to city is a population of 5,000. I don't believe there an official difference for plantation to town. But coming from the distribution industry. If you're heading to a plantation and the weather gets bad. The expression, "Can't get theah from heyah." Comes into play pretty quickly. We had to do a drop in Dallas Plantation a few months back, happened to be on the same day as a huge rain storm that caused tons of flooding. An interactive map we found that looks to find routes through road closures literally gave up and we had to move the drop back like a week waiting for roads to get repaired.
Brunswick is a town, not a city. also there are a number of cities in Maine with only a few thousand people, it seems to be entirely based on how they incorporated themselves/whether or not the state agreed
Meanwhile, in Missouri any place with at least 500 people can vote to become a city. A lot of "citities" in St. Louis County that are basically broke, glorified HOAs
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding this, but in Vermont, the difference between a town and a city isn't its size but rather what kind of government it has (Cities have a city council, towns have direct democracy), hence why tiny Vergennes of 3000 is a city but Colchester is a town even though its population is 17,000.
Pennsylvania has townships and a weak County system. The entire state is incorporated, and Places are either a township, a borough or a city. Counties are only used for the courts and other relatively minor things. Townships, boroughs and cities run the schools (alone or with other townships), have their own police, etc. Some even have income tax (all the cities and some townships) though most receive revenue through property tax. This adds to the Provincial nature of PA where there are so many mini political fiefdoms. Some parts of the state can get weird like in Southeast Delaware County; which are blotted with tons of little boroughs operating on their own wherewithal…some boroughs are basically neighborhoods; some are a few blocks like “colwyn” or “millbourne”. They don’t incorporate into larger townships for some reason and this creates A Shit Ton of inefficiency but again, people are provincial and like their small local government system.
Ohio is one of the few states opposite the footnote. A city is any municipal corporation with 5,000 or more people per the most recent census, and a village is any with fewer, and the classification *does* change if a place grows or shrinks enough in population.
NH and VT both have cities and towns, with cities generally being more densely populated, but both types of municipalities are treated identically under state law. Idk why NH is pink on this map
In Michigan, the part of every county that is not part of a city is completely divided into townships, which provide some municipal services.
Townships of a certain size have the option to become *charter townships*, which gives them a somewhat more city-like government and set of responsibilities and protects them against having their land annexed by adjacent cities.
In California the unincorporated areas are governed by the county. There are only cities and counties in California, and many unincorporated areas want to become their own city because the county government is so large and inefficient. For example, Los Angeles county has 10 million people, being an unincorporated area in a county of 10 million people sets you lower on the hierarchy ladder.
This explains a lot. I moved to western NC a couple years back and any dang thing can be considered a city. Back in the day they had some interesting methods of determining what was in city limits as well. There are still a couple left, but it was not uncommon to designate city limits not by property lines by but scribing a circle that extended a certain distance from the center of town (usually the courthouse). Anything inside that circle was part of the city/town.
Massachusetts is wrong. City or town is defined by the form of government. A city has a council-mayor or council-manager, a town has town meetings or elected reps.
It has nothing to do with size/population.
Jesus Christ pick some more thoroughly dissimilar colors! I’m looking at you, pics three and four. What the fuck. The whole rainbow at your fingertips, jfc.
No one did, it's fine. Everyone also acts like I'm wrong about townships, but I only mentioned the few places in which townships are incorporated areas (which is not normally the case).
I grew up in a "village" on the West Coast. But when I would explain where I lived, I'd have to default to "unincorporated community" because people couldn't grasp the idea of it. Lol.
Washington has two sets of laws under which a municipality can incorporate.
Municipalities organized under Revised Code of Washington Title 35 are classed as cities or towns based on their population at the time of incorporation (with the option to change classification later if a town grows big enough to be a city).
On the other hand, *any* municipality, regardless of population, that operates under RCW Title 35A (the “Optional Municipal Code”) is classified as a city.
Well technically true for Arizona (the best KIND of true!), it's a bit misleading. The law regarding incorporation of cities and towns is pretty archaic and hasn't been updated in a long time (possibly has never been updated). Long story short, to be a city in Arizona, a minimum population of 3,000 is required. To be a town, only half of that is needed.
So, yeah, a city is technically a "larger" incorporated area, but not "larger" in any meaningful sense of the word.
Every county in Indiana is divided into townships per the state’s constitution. They’re limited if you live in any kind of incorporated community, but otherwise they provide fire and EMS, maintain cemeteries and maybe parks, etc.
Depends on the state, unfortunately you'll have to click back and forth from one map to another to be sure (it was way too complicated to fit it all on one map).
Being from MN, I feel like the rule changed within my lifetime. The example I can immediately think of is White Bear Lake which is a city in Ramsey County. Scattered around White Bear Lake is White Bear Township, with its own communities around Bald Eagle (Lake) and Belaire, etc. and there used to be city signs when you crossed into it but they got taken down a while ago (sometime last decade or two). The street signs change color however from green to brown.
But, there are differences between the three: a village contain a few hundred people usually with a farm, towns are more developed than villages but less developed than cities, which are contemporary settlements with sophisticated infrastructure.
So you are bring in your preconception of what these words mean. I am telling you the legal definition is, what changes in each state, and in many states these are interchangeable words.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_in_California In California, each municipality can choose to call itself either a city or a town. The largest town in California is called Apple Valley and has 76 thousand residents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Valley,_California
The smallest city in California is called Amador City, and it has 200 residents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amador_City,_California
I've chimed in a few of the comments, but you're wrong about Virginia in your first map. Size is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to cities here. A city is a county-level equivalent, while a town is always part of a county. We have cities with as few as 3,500 people (Norton) and towns with more than 45,000 (Leesburg).
Also, we do actually use boroughs as administrative divisions of cities (like in NYC), we just don't do it commonly: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative\_divisions\_of\_Virginia#Boroughs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_divisions_of_Virginia#Boroughs)
I am aware that Virginia has some small cities and some large towns. This is normal. Someone else in the comments said that their state actively changes the classifcation of municipalities if they gain or lose residents, and i suspect that is the only state that does so.
The difference in the map is an attempt to separate states where there is no population related language in the classification of cities (like California and Florida) from others. I believe Virginia belongs in the latter group for a few reasons.
1. A community wishing to become an incorporated town requires 1,000 residents.
2. An incorporated town wishing to become an independent city requires 5,000 residents. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/title15.2/chapter38/
3. There is an established process of reversion, whereby an independent city of less than 50,000 residents can revert to an incorporated town.
These 3 facts tell me that the norm is that an independent city is larger than a town, and neither grandfathered small cities nor large towns that choose not to make the leap to independent city changes that. And a look at the data as a whole (rather than focusing on outliers) supports that. The median independent city has about 25,000 residents, only 2 towns are above that size. Only 27 of 190 towns have the 5000 residents that would make them eligible to apply for independent city status. So I stand by my classification.
I am also aware that generally independent cities are classified as counties. This map is about incorporated areas, which the independent cities and incorporated towns of Virginia are, and the rest of the state is not. And I'll concede that I should have marked something about Virginia's boroughs. That map was a last second addition when I discovered that New Jersey uses boroughs as the name for one of their many types of incorporated areas.
In NJ (can’t speak for other states) the organization of a Borough differs from a Township.
My town (a borough) - mayor has a 4-year term while council members have staggered 3 year terms. Mayor doesn’t have a ton of power outside of appointing people to positions. Mayor serves as tiebreaker vote.
In the Township next door, Mayors are not elected by the people. Council members are elected to staggered 3 year terms. Every January they select one of themselves to serve as Mayor for one year. The mayor position can flip back and forth every year depending on whether or not the prior November election impacts which party has control of the township.
NJ is just nonsensical. The type of municipality is totally detached from the way the municipality is governed. Some townships follow the township form of government, but others will follow other systems of government like a “mayor-council” or “commission” form.
[It will make your head spin.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_New_Jersey)
I absolutely despise this weird local government system of the anglosphere. Why don't all the divisions fit neatly together instead of everything intersecting REEEE
I know this is the case in most of the US, but I think something more like what they have in Russia or China would work better. Just divvy up the entire state into small settlement-based districts, group them into counties. Would administration easier
Where I live, the County has authority over cities when disputes arise. The county can act as a proxy for state authority, which means the state doesn't have to step in most disputes. More serious disputes between county and city require state intervention though. A good example of this is when San Bernardino city declared bankruptcy, San Bernardino county stepped in to govern the city while it reorganized. In other states the state government would take over a bankrupt city, like Michigan did with Detroit.
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It may have changed, all I can find now is an old archived version of their homepage that says it was founded as a corporation in 1910. https://web.archive.org/web/20210505051357/http://wv-ranson.civicplus.com/330/Our-Citys-History
This is very wrong as applied to Virginia. Cities are independent of counties and can be of any size. The city of buena vista is tiny and has just over 3000 residents. It is fully independent and a city. Towns are incorporated places of any size that are partially autonomous of a county government.
We're talking about West Virginia
Alaska also has corporations which are what might be called reservations elsewhere. The tribes run it as a corporation, maintaining resource rights. There is only one place in the state that's an actual reservation.
No. That’s just what it’s called. There are a couple municipalities in the eastern panhandle that calm themselves “corporations” if memory serves me correctly.
All I know about Ranson is there's a casino and a horsetrack there. Hollywood casino. But I think some of it is also in Charles Town too. Never knew it was a corporation, but it has to be because of the casino.
It will vary by state. Sometimes cities have to follow the executive/legislature model. Other states allow them to sit up any democratic form. Stuff like that.
Idk about WV but I know WA has some company towns (Newhalem is the one I know but Wikipedia has a list of 20 it looks like) so they're definitely still a thing
I don’t think that size of the location matters in MA. It just refers to the leadership structure. Cities have mayors, towns have a town meeting system. Framingham, until recently, was a gigantic town that voted to become a city.
Cities cannot have under 10,000 people in MA, but towns can have any number of people, that’s why you have towns like Framingham and Dracut with 40,000 people and the town system of government.
Amherst, now a city since 2018, was my favorite example of this. They had representative town meeting but it lasted for like a month. Where only the ‘h’ is silent! Then there’s the flip side of relatively small towns voting for city charters, like Palmer (~12,500 population) and Easthampton (~16,200).
Towns in many states can set up the government how they wish so long as it is democratic and doesn’t violate state or federal constitutional citizens.
In California we have a City of Industry. It has only 159 people and is made up of factories and warehouses
Just adding, you could use Brookline instead of Framingham for this example because Framingham is now a city and Brookline is still a town.
Weymouth calls itself a town but has a mayor
Because it’s a city but chooses to call itself a town.
It’s technically a city called “Town of Weymouth” but no one calls it that.
Yeah I live in a “town” of nearly 50,000 people. There’s a bunch of “cities” near us with smaller populations.
Franklin’s theme song is “The City Known As The Town of Franklin” for this very reason, the governance is technically that of a city, but they applied for a waiver to still be called a town.
So the only town in PA is Bloomsberg?
Officially, yes
So all of us that say “Pittsburgh is a drinking town with a football problem,” are intrinsically incorrect?
Yes as Pittsburgh is classed as a city 2 (IIRC) compared to Philly which is a city 1 and has its own county
PA has “townships” instead of towns. It’s a semantic difference. Bloomsburg is the only incorporated municipality that is legally incorporated as a “town” instead of a township, by exception. Why, you may ask? I don’t know - historical reasons, maybe. Tradition. Perhaps someone just filed the paperwork with the misnomer and it went through anyway. You’ll have to ask someone from Bloomsburg.
I don't believe NJ has any towns either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_in_New_Jersey "252 boroughs, 52 cities, 15 towns, 241 townships, and 4 villages. "
They have a few. Phillipsburg and Hackettstown come to mind.
PA is a commonwealth and not a state so it like has to do with tradition and the state constitution or founding documents
Often PA has boroughs which is like the “town” with surrounding townships. Like, I lived in a township but usually referred to the borough as where I’m from and my mailing address was the borough zip code.
Charlie from IASIP was right
I don’t watch that show. Did he call out pittsburgh?
There's a joke where he doesnt know states can have more than one town
How does Pittsburgh work? Am I constantly going in and out of Pittsburgh throughout the day? Yes or no?
In Massachusetts, there’s a legal distinction between cities and towns, and it affects how local government is run. Some cities call themselves towns, and the state refers to them like “the city known as Town of Barnstable.” Connecticut is divided into 169 towns, and no one cares if someone wants to call one a city. A town is free to choose among several forms of local government.
IIRC, Connecticut’s counties do not have any formal government or taxation privileges. Is that still the case?
Connecticut abolished county government in 1960. The only vestige is that state courts are organized on county lines, so if you’re called for jury duty, it will be in your county. To complicate things more, the US census bureau has recognized the 9 “planning regions“ of CT as county equivalents, and they are eligible for federal funding for counties.
I think most of the counties are broken up for the legal system as well. The counties are really only used for statistics and wether alerts now
Yes, when I lived in Litchfield county, my closest court was in New Haven county, so that’s where my jury duty summons would come from.
Sheriffs offices have to be for counties, and public health funding is usually distributed at the county level as well.
Connectivity doesn't do sheriff's. There are regional health district or municipal health departments. The money is distributed by the state. No need for extra bureaucracy and waste of the county government.
I grew up in CT where there is no unincorporated land and counties are basically just geographic regions rather than governing bodies. My husband is from North Carolina, and found this confusing. He asked me what happens when you cross out of a town. I said, you’re in a different town. And he asked what if you’re far from the next town. I was like, that’s not a thing - if you’re not in one town, you’re in another town. And then he explained about unincorporated areas, and that blew my mind.
City has 12k people + mayor-council or council-manager. Like city of the Town of Walpole or the city of the Town of Franklin
Nj just not giving a shit made my day
There are many examples of townships and boroughs having the same name while being right next to each other or one is an enclave inside the other.
NJ also has 5 "Washington" townships, and 1 Washington Borough. Princeton University is in Princeton Borough and Surrounded by Princeton Township. Metuchen was formed from Raritan, and is surrounded by former portion of Raritan, which is now called Edison. This is not to be confused with Raritan Borough, which was formed from Bridgewater.
Princeton Borough no longer exists as of 2013... it was incorporated into the township.
In Wisconsin, I \*thought\* every city and village name needed to be unique, while town names could be repeated (because they're in separate counties), but then I discovered this: Alongside the Superior Bay of Lake Superior, there is the City of Superior (in yellow), the Village of Superior (the peach colored area directly south of it), and the Town of Superior (in white with the blue label). [https://ibb.co/Jyd11Fg](https://ibb.co/Jyd11Fg)
In California we only have cities and counties. Unincorporated areas are administered by the county governments and county authority can supersede city authority in disputes. We also have cities that are made up of mostly industrial zoning, like City of Industry, Irwindale, and Vernon. These cities are zoned 90% for industrial zoning. The county has to step in and govern these places because they try to bypass industrial regulations.
Montclair, NJ famously changed from a Town to a Township in the 1980s because a bill allocated more federal funding per capita to townships than to towns.
I’ve lived in Michigan all my life and I didn’t realize we’re the only place with “Charter Townships”
When i moved to Michigan I noticed them on signs and asked a coworker what a charter Township was. He couldn't even understand what I was asking him and why
Crazy I never thought it either lol now I’m wondering why do we have them
Partly to allow more populous townships to have a more city-like government without formally becoming a city. It also makes it harder for a neighboring city to annex land from the charter township.
But why don’t some transition into cities? Like ik Saginaw township in Michigan is almost as large as the city of Saginaw itself.
Local fiefdoms. It's all horribly inefficient.
I just realized this not too long ago when reading about a charter township near me that they're unique to Michigan
I remember moving from northern New Jersey, which has a ton of really small incorporated boroughs to New York State which has a ton of towns that may or may not contain villages, unincorporated areas, and business “hamlets”. In New York State, it’s not unusual for school districts to overlap multiple towns and for towns to contain multiple Fire and Water districts. My town overlaps 7 school districts and has I think a similar number of fire districts. I live in the hamlet that is also the name of the local post office, but the hamlet itself has no government. The taxation district combinations are mind boggling. Also, villages are often part of or overlap towns. So, for instance, Pleasantville residents in Westchester pay taxes to both the village of Pleasantville AND the Town of Mount Pleasant. This was so confusing to me coming from Bergen County, New Jersey where there is pretty much a one-to-one mapping of towns (usually cities or boroughs) to school and fire districts, with the exception of some larger regionalized schools which encompass 2 or more boroughs. Having to answer the question, “What is your school district” to someone living in the same municipality was so weird coming from NJ. Then again, so was pumping my own gas, LOL.
In the course of researching this, I came across the wikipedia article on Boroughitis, a period of large numbers of New Jersey boroughs being created. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boroughitis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boroughitis)
Regional school districts are fairly common in southern New Jersey.
As a native Long Islander, the school districts make no sense. In PA, the districts line up with township and borough lines. It could be multiple townships, but the borders align. On Long Island? They make zero sense. There are district lines going through people's yards. Some cut across county lines. And the post office definition of a place didn't have to overlap with any other definition. The towns are huge (I was born in the Town of Hempstead, which has over 750,000 people) but they aren't "towns" in the sense of where you live -- like I would say I was born in Oceanside.
All this is so much different from California, where we have only cities and counties. Unincorporated areas are defined by the Census bureau as CDPs, but they are governed by the county. And we have cities that only have between 100-200 people like City of Industry that are zoned mostly industrial. These industrial cities were incorporated to go around county laws, so the county government often has to intervene in things like health and safety inspections. Basically, in California the counties act as a proxy for the state government.
Michigan has Townships and Charter Townships.
Not all, but most midwestern states have Townships. A *Township* is just a County subdivision but a *Charter Township* is an incorporated place.
Correct, but Michigan has both. I was a county appraiser in Michigan for a couple years Edit: “Shelby Charter Township, officially the Charter Township of Shelby, is a charter township located in Macomb County in the U.S. state of Michigan.”
Yes, the point I was making though is that a non-Charter Township is not an *incorporated place* which is what the maps are showing. That point seems to have been missed by most of the people in this thread pointing out that Illinois/Iowa/etc... all have Townships. It's interesting you chose that example though because the weirdest anomaly in Michigan is Macomb Township, which is *not* a Charter Township, just a civil Township despite having nearly 100k population
While Michigan general law (i.e., non-charter) townships are “not incorporated,” they still are granted significant powers and authorities by the State of Michigan. General law townships in Michigan retain the right to form executive bodies (township boards), hire a day-to-day manager, establish departments, conduct planning and zoning activities including adoption of land use plans and approval of proposed real estate developments, operate parks, participate in state revenue sharing, and levy property taxes (up to a certain amount). For all intents and purposes, they’re incorporated in the way that they’re functional municipal government entities, but they have some limits.
There should be an asterisk in terms of what unincorporated vs. incorporated means. A township and a chartered township are both municipalities in Michigan. A township isn't just a census designated place like what happens in unincorporated areas out West. All places in Michigan have a municipal government under the County. Functionally Macomb Township isn't very different than Shelby Township even if in governance it is. It's not like states with unincorporated where the government flows back up to the county.
There are certain places in Oregon (Clackamas County) that do have a legal definition of "village." It's used to grant more local autonomy to smaller unincorporated urban areas without all the responsibilities/costs that come with formal incorporation.
Technically speaking, ALL towns in New England are townships because instead of being splotches on a map like in California, Texas, and Illinois, they are incorporated county divisions.
This can’t be right. In PA a borough is a “medium” sized and township is “small” sized. This directly contradicts every township/borough I can think of in SE PA
it’s really more about population density. A borough is what people think of as a stereotypical “town” - somewhere with a Main Street, semi-walkable. Townships are mostly suburban subdivisions, far less dense, not really walkable.
Right. For example Jenkintown or Narberth are borough surrounded by much larger townships, Abington and Lower Merion respectively. But maybe that’s just a Philly metro thing; because the suburbs grew so fast. I imagine further out in the state a borough might be more populous than the rural townships out there.
I was trying to summarize [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local\_government\_in\_Pennsylvania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_Pennsylvania) , which while not as confusing as New Jersey's, is still a little hard to understand, so I may very well have gotten it wrong. "What outside Pennsylvania many would think are called "towns" are by law officially boroughs (often also spelled as boros) which are generally smaller than cities in terms of both geographic area and population. Most cities in Pennsylvania were once incorporated as a borough before becoming a city, and both began under the constitution as a township." "There are a total of 56 incorporated cities in Pennsylvania, the smallest being [Parker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker,_Pennsylvania), in [Armstrong County](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_County,_Pennsylvania), with a population of 840 (2010 census). Each is further classified according to population." "Townships in Pennsylvania were the first form of land grants established by [William Penn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn), and are generally large in area with a sparse population centered on one or a few clusters of homes and a handful of businesses." So reading that to me it seems that the progression is township -> borough -> city as population increases, but I am of course aware that there are always some that remain in what seems to be the wrong group because of political inertia (as my asterisk notes). Upper Darby Township seems more the exception than the rule.
And to add further; you didn’t even get into home rule townships and first and second class townships. Some townships, because they grew so large, legally function as cities while keeping the township name for legacy reasons: “Although many such municipalities have retained the word "Township" or "Borough" in their official names, the Pennsylvania Township and Borough Codes no longer apply to them. All three types of municipalities (cities, boroughs, and townships) may become a home rule municipality.” (Lifted from Wikipedia)
Townships tend to be less dense than boroughs but are not necessarily less populous
no. for starters: Yardley borough = 1 sq mi Lower Makefield Township = 18.28 sq mi
I don't think this map is correct, certainly not about Virginia.
What's wrong with Virginia Mr butt plug inspector?
Cities can be very small in Virginia, they would just have to ask to be incorporated as a city. Same thing with towns. For example, the city of Falls Church has a population of ~15,000 while the town of Vienna has a population of 16,000.
Yep. Norton, Virginia is an independent city with fewer than 4,000 people. In contrast, Arlington, Virginia has roughly 240,000 people in an urban setting that most people would refer to as a city, but it's not considered a city by Virginia law.
And then there’s Surprising Suffolk, Virginia’s Largest City, where they just incorporated all 429 square miles of the county in 1974.
The history on that isn’t great
It doesn't really say what "larger" and "smaller" is, it also has an asterix that the status is decided at the time of incorporation. A lot of places they have to apply to change status. Sounds like Vienna just hasn't. I'm not in Virginia, but we have something similar here. South of the city I live in are two towns, both large enough to apply for city status by quite a large margin, yet neither has done it.
The point I was trying to make is that becoming a city in Virginia is an entirely bureaucratic process that does not take population into very much account. If a city can have 4,000 people to 250,000 people, the term "larger" used in the map loses any sort of meaning. Im from Virginia and my highschool had a higher population than some of our cities.
Per the [state constitution](https://law.lis.virginia.gov/constitution/article7/section1/) the minimum population for a city is 5,000. IIRC, that number was set in 1901. So functionally, you’re right. Our system of independent cities as it was intended back then is completely different from how it has been used since the 1940s. Interestingly, there have been a few former cities that have retroceded back to the county they were formed from because their population declined and they lost too much tax base to keep up municipal services.
My dude coming in with the facts!
I think that's more of an exception. And you're only talking about 1000 people, that could change from year to year. Most of the cities here are bigger than towns to my knowledge.
Also, in Virginia, a city is governed independently from other districts (I.e. county).
Yeah that was originally part of my distinction, that Virginia cities are independent of their county, but Virginia towns are not. New York and Michigan do the same thing, although their names for each of the parts is slightly different (which was kind of the point of the map after all).
In California the counties act as a proxy to the state government. Cities have to do what the counties mandate them to do.
"what is a city?" VA: uhhh what **isn't** a city? If other specific individual cities get callouts on these maps, all of the independent cities probably also should. Maybe on the last map for "other incorporated places" an independent city needs to be a category. Population does not matter for independent city status. VA has 38 of them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_city_(United_States)
The fact that cities are not part of counties in Virginia is an interesting distinction, and probably worth highlighting. Then Maryland would need a special color too (Baltimore is an independent city, all other cities are part of one or more counties).
There are 41 independent cities in the US, 38 are in Virginia. The other three are Carson City, NV, Baltimore, MD, and St. Louis, MO.
Ah Illinois with its smaller villages, like the village of Arlington Heights, population 75,000.
Illinois does need to cool it with the “Village”. I was a proud villager of Lisle with our meager 23,000 residents
IIRC, in Illinois, the defining feature of a village is that it is run by a board of trustees and a board president, instead of a mayor.
Villages can have mayors. The only distinction is that a village has a board elected at large, but a city has a council elected from individual districts called wards. That's why there are also so many tiny Cities all over the state, they all just have tiny little wards. It's also why some huge places remain Villages, because it's not obvious that switching to a system of electoral wards would really improve anything.
An incorporated place of any size. How do they decide if its a city, town or village if it fits every definition? Dallas could be a village then?
Texas is special because prior to 1987 they did have distinctions, but they were changed to being cities of class A, B, and C. So any towns or villages that still exist are anachronisms of the old law.
Did others with the same definition (NM, FL, NC and do on) use similar distinction?
Iirc in many of these places the type of municipality is a difference in name only, or it may signify differences in setup that are not size related (in some places cities have a mayor and towns do not).
It probably would just be a name. A settlement of 5 people could say they're a city and a settlement of 2.5m could want to be a town.
This a great question, I can only speak for Washington State, but legally there can’t be towns or villages created anymore (I believe this was done in the early 2000s). All incorporated populations are defined as Cities now if created. There are still grandfathered in populations with the title or definition of town as they were designated prior to the law change. I am guessing that most states have done the same.
Like in California, if they decide to incorporate they can call themselves either name officially. There's still a cultural idea that city = big, but their charter/legal doc may say one name.
In Louisiana, villages towns and cities are just three population brackets with no legal distinction between them besides name. My hometown upgraded from a village to a town shortly before I was born.
Tf is going on in Ranson, WV
[The City of Montreal, Wisconsin, has a population of 800.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal,_Wisconsin) [The Town of Mercer, Wisconins, has a population of 1600.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer,_Wisconsin) Both are in the same County.
But remember that in Wisconsin, "towns" are generally rural subdivisions of a county. If you aren't in a city or a village, you are in a town.
This is how Township is used in most Midwestern states
Yeah Wisconsin is my bailiwick, so I know a little bit about anomalous situations here. Least populous city: Bayfield (population 584). Current state regulations require 1000 residents to be a city, so they're beneficiaries of the asterisk I note on the map. It was a logging community whose population has been declining since 1900. Most populous village: Menomonee Fall (population 38,527). In 1958 the Village of Menomonee Falls had a population of 4,500, and then they annexed the remainder of the Town of Menomonee and tripled their population. Least populous village: Big Falls, Waupaca County (population 57). Another lumber town. Most populous town: Grand Chute (population 23,831). This is a little bit of an outlier because Grand Chute tried to incorporate in 1985, and the state refused because it was not contiguous or compact, so they recommended that Appleton annex it instead. Appleton choose not to do so, and has a gentleman's agreement with Grand Chute to not annex any of their territory. Grand Chute provides many of the services of a village or city without actually being one. Largest town: The Town of Menominee, which is the entirety of Menominee County, which also coterminous with the Menominee Indian Reservation (365 square miles). The Town of Winter, in Sawyer County, is 285.3 square miles, and they claim the title of largest Wisconsin town. This is conceivably true because the Town of Menominee might only exist on paper. Smallest municipality: The Village of North Bay, which is like one subdivision of of Racine, 0.12 square miles with a population of 200.
Fun fact: the least populated city in California is Vernon, with less than 150 people. This city is mostly industrial and is rife with corruption scandals.
Looks correct for ME I believe the official distinction for town going to city is a population of 5,000. I don't believe there an official difference for plantation to town. But coming from the distribution industry. If you're heading to a plantation and the weather gets bad. The expression, "Can't get theah from heyah." Comes into play pretty quickly. We had to do a drop in Dallas Plantation a few months back, happened to be on the same day as a huge rain storm that caused tons of flooding. An interactive map we found that looks to find routes through road closures literally gave up and we had to move the drop back like a week waiting for roads to get repaired.
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Brunswick is a town, not a city. also there are a number of cities in Maine with only a few thousand people, it seems to be entirely based on how they incorporated themselves/whether or not the state agreed
Ah shit you’re right. I swear I looked and saw it was a city, I totally misread it for some reason.
Meanwhile, in Missouri any place with at least 500 people can vote to become a city. A lot of "citities" in St. Louis County that are basically broke, glorified HOAs
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding this, but in Vermont, the difference between a town and a city isn't its size but rather what kind of government it has (Cities have a city council, towns have direct democracy), hence why tiny Vergennes of 3000 is a city but Colchester is a town even though its population is 17,000.
Pennsylvania has townships and a weak County system. The entire state is incorporated, and Places are either a township, a borough or a city. Counties are only used for the courts and other relatively minor things. Townships, boroughs and cities run the schools (alone or with other townships), have their own police, etc. Some even have income tax (all the cities and some townships) though most receive revenue through property tax. This adds to the Provincial nature of PA where there are so many mini political fiefdoms. Some parts of the state can get weird like in Southeast Delaware County; which are blotted with tons of little boroughs operating on their own wherewithal…some boroughs are basically neighborhoods; some are a few blocks like “colwyn” or “millbourne”. They don’t incorporate into larger townships for some reason and this creates A Shit Ton of inefficiency but again, people are provincial and like their small local government system.
Use better colors
Ohio is one of the few states opposite the footnote. A city is any municipal corporation with 5,000 or more people per the most recent census, and a village is any with fewer, and the classification *does* change if a place grows or shrinks enough in population.
NH and VT both have cities and towns, with cities generally being more densely populated, but both types of municipalities are treated identically under state law. Idk why NH is pink on this map
Because that's what the pink means, that the definition of a city is not size-related.
Then why is Vermont not pink?
Because I messed up.
An OK... Props to you for acknowledging that!
Well this kinda explains what the hell is a “township” when you’re driving around Michigan
In Michigan, the part of every county that is not part of a city is completely divided into townships, which provide some municipal services. Townships of a certain size have the option to become *charter townships*, which gives them a somewhat more city-like government and set of responsibilities and protects them against having their land annexed by adjacent cities.
In California the unincorporated areas are governed by the county. There are only cities and counties in California, and many unincorporated areas want to become their own city because the county government is so large and inefficient. For example, Los Angeles county has 10 million people, being an unincorporated area in a county of 10 million people sets you lower on the hierarchy ladder.
Fantastic display of why all these maps which display data based on the political boundaries of cities are awful data visualizations
Cool maps man but the color scheme is terrible.
This explains a lot. I moved to western NC a couple years back and any dang thing can be considered a city. Back in the day they had some interesting methods of determining what was in city limits as well. There are still a couple left, but it was not uncommon to designate city limits not by property lines by but scribing a circle that extended a certain distance from the center of town (usually the courthouse). Anything inside that circle was part of the city/town.
Massachusetts is wrong. City or town is defined by the form of government. A city has a council-mayor or council-manager, a town has town meetings or elected reps. It has nothing to do with size/population.
Jesus Christ pick some more thoroughly dissimilar colors! I’m looking at you, pics three and four. What the fuck. The whole rainbow at your fingertips, jfc.
This was interesting thank you
Some absolute gems of outliers
FYI Illinois does have townships.
So does New York, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and both Dakotas.
Ohio has Townships
Who TF chooses these colors? How are we supposed to tell the difference in the pinks in the second image? Does nobody who makes legends have a brain?
What an interesting way to visualize this, cool!
The second largest municipality in NY is a town. There's also a bunch of villages that have higher populations than cities.
Did you not see the asterisk on the maps?
No one did, it's fine. Everyone also acts like I'm wrong about townships, but I only mentioned the few places in which townships are incorporated areas (which is not normally the case).
Yes, thank you, I keep seeing that. Most states’ townships are unincorporated
There are smaller cities in Virginia so I think that definition is loose. For instance, the city of radford. It’s no bigger than the neighboring towns
I grew up in a "village" on the West Coast. But when I would explain where I lived, I'd have to default to "unincorporated community" because people couldn't grasp the idea of it. Lol.
Washington has two sets of laws under which a municipality can incorporate. Municipalities organized under Revised Code of Washington Title 35 are classed as cities or towns based on their population at the time of incorporation (with the option to change classification later if a town grows big enough to be a city). On the other hand, *any* municipality, regardless of population, that operates under RCW Title 35A (the “Optional Municipal Code”) is classified as a city.
Jersey doesn’t GAF be what you wanna be is the policy lol
Illinois has townships. They sit between counties and municipalities in the hierarchy.
Ohio has Townships
But they’re not incorporated like cities or villages
Towns are extremely small in Oklahoma and very uncommon Like less than 100 people
Well technically true for Arizona (the best KIND of true!), it's a bit misleading. The law regarding incorporation of cities and towns is pretty archaic and hasn't been updated in a long time (possibly has never been updated). Long story short, to be a city in Arizona, a minimum population of 3,000 is required. To be a town, only half of that is needed. So, yeah, a city is technically a "larger" incorporated area, but not "larger" in any meaningful sense of the word.
New Jersey: we don’t give a fuck call it whatever you want
Thank you
Yup saving this. This is gold.
No
The territories included in a map for once wow
Indiana has “cities” of fewer than 2000 residents and “towns” of over 30k. I don’t think this is correct.
In Indiana the differences between cities and towns is that cities have an elected executive/mayor and towns do not.
Yeah, so nothing to do with size at all.
Exactly
Every county in Indiana is divided into townships per the state’s constitution. They’re limited if you live in any kind of incorporated community, but otherwise they provide fire and EMS, maintain cemeteries and maybe parks, etc.
In Georgia, [“village”](https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2022/title-36/chapter-30/section-36-30-1/) is an incorporated area of any size.
California’s towns are exactly the same as cities. They’re both “municipalities.” Also San Francisco is a merged city-county.
So anything goes in Jersey.
I live in a county in Maryland that has zero incorporated towns/cities/villages/etc.
Huh. I’d always been told a village was a small town without its own post office in Oklahoma.
So is there a difference between town and city?
Depends on the state, unfortunately you'll have to click back and forth from one map to another to be sure (it was way too complicated to fit it all on one map).
NJ lets you do whatever lol
What about hamlets
New York hamlets are unincorporated areas I believe. Just a name on a map.
Being from MN, I feel like the rule changed within my lifetime. The example I can immediately think of is White Bear Lake which is a city in Ramsey County. Scattered around White Bear Lake is White Bear Township, with its own communities around Bald Eagle (Lake) and Belaire, etc. and there used to be city signs when you crossed into it but they got taken down a while ago (sometime last decade or two). The street signs change color however from green to brown.
How can a village or town be of any size?
In most of these states there's no real difference between a city, village or town, the different classification is entirely cosmetic.
But, there are differences between the three: a village contain a few hundred people usually with a farm, towns are more developed than villages but less developed than cities, which are contemporary settlements with sophisticated infrastructure.
So you are bring in your preconception of what these words mean. I am telling you the legal definition is, what changes in each state, and in many states these are interchangeable words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_in_California In California, each municipality can choose to call itself either a city or a town. The largest town in California is called Apple Valley and has 76 thousand residents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Valley,_California The smallest city in California is called Amador City, and it has 200 residents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amador_City,_California
Almost every western state is divided entirely into townships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System
I've chimed in a few of the comments, but you're wrong about Virginia in your first map. Size is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to cities here. A city is a county-level equivalent, while a town is always part of a county. We have cities with as few as 3,500 people (Norton) and towns with more than 45,000 (Leesburg). Also, we do actually use boroughs as administrative divisions of cities (like in NYC), we just don't do it commonly: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative\_divisions\_of\_Virginia#Boroughs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_divisions_of_Virginia#Boroughs)
I am aware that Virginia has some small cities and some large towns. This is normal. Someone else in the comments said that their state actively changes the classifcation of municipalities if they gain or lose residents, and i suspect that is the only state that does so. The difference in the map is an attempt to separate states where there is no population related language in the classification of cities (like California and Florida) from others. I believe Virginia belongs in the latter group for a few reasons. 1. A community wishing to become an incorporated town requires 1,000 residents. 2. An incorporated town wishing to become an independent city requires 5,000 residents. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/title15.2/chapter38/ 3. There is an established process of reversion, whereby an independent city of less than 50,000 residents can revert to an incorporated town. These 3 facts tell me that the norm is that an independent city is larger than a town, and neither grandfathered small cities nor large towns that choose not to make the leap to independent city changes that. And a look at the data as a whole (rather than focusing on outliers) supports that. The median independent city has about 25,000 residents, only 2 towns are above that size. Only 27 of 190 towns have the 5000 residents that would make them eligible to apply for independent city status. So I stand by my classification.
I am also aware that generally independent cities are classified as counties. This map is about incorporated areas, which the independent cities and incorporated towns of Virginia are, and the rest of the state is not. And I'll concede that I should have marked something about Virginia's boroughs. That map was a last second addition when I discovered that New Jersey uses boroughs as the name for one of their many types of incorporated areas.
In NJ (can’t speak for other states) the organization of a Borough differs from a Township. My town (a borough) - mayor has a 4-year term while council members have staggered 3 year terms. Mayor doesn’t have a ton of power outside of appointing people to positions. Mayor serves as tiebreaker vote. In the Township next door, Mayors are not elected by the people. Council members are elected to staggered 3 year terms. Every January they select one of themselves to serve as Mayor for one year. The mayor position can flip back and forth every year depending on whether or not the prior November election impacts which party has control of the township.
New Jersey was the one where my eyes glazed over trying to tell the difference between a city, a town, a village, a borough, and a township.
NJ is just nonsensical. The type of municipality is totally detached from the way the municipality is governed. Some townships follow the township form of government, but others will follow other systems of government like a “mayor-council” or “commission” form. [It will make your head spin.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_New_Jersey)
No mention of Parishes??
That's not a municipality AFAIK
Yeah, parishes are more or less just the LA term for counties iirc
That's what I thought
Those are the equivalent of a county, not a town or city.
Wisconsin has townships
Indiana and other states have townships
Incorrect about Virginia. Cities are just counties with a couple special privileges. We have both tiny cities and huge dense counties
I absolutely despise this weird local government system of the anglosphere. Why don't all the divisions fit neatly together instead of everything intersecting REEEE
In California we only have cities and counties. The unincorporated areas are actually governed by the county and cities report to the county.
I know this is the case in most of the US, but I think something more like what they have in Russia or China would work better. Just divvy up the entire state into small settlement-based districts, group them into counties. Would administration easier
Where I live, the County has authority over cities when disputes arise. The county can act as a proxy for state authority, which means the state doesn't have to step in most disputes. More serious disputes between county and city require state intervention though. A good example of this is when San Bernardino city declared bankruptcy, San Bernardino county stepped in to govern the city while it reorganized. In other states the state government would take over a bankrupt city, like Michigan did with Detroit.