United States admin level

Administrative boundaries delineate levels of government, displayed as differently-rendered boundary lines, among other uses (see this regarding capital, heritage). The United States (US) Constitution's Tenth Amendment makes local government in the US a matter of state law, whereas the District of Columbia, Territories and Commonwealths are governed by federal law from the US Congress, distinct from states. As a result, the 50 states have a wide variety of administrative structures, each is unique, though nearly all start with a similar subdivisional level: 48 of 50 states have an administrative subdivision called "county." (Lousiana's "parishes" and Alaska's "boroughs" are agreed to be "county equivalents." In Rhode Island, "county" nearly vanishes as an administrative subdivision, existing largely as a geographic region, though Rhode Island counties are in OSM tagged boundary=administrative for "minor" administrative reasons. Connecticut, similar to Rhode Island in that its counties are vestigial, and to some degree Massachusetts have unusual county structures, though both are agreed to have counties across the whole of both these states, see details below). In non-state Territories and Commonwealths, "municipality" serves this subdivisional purpose, such municipalities have different names in each Territory and Commonwealth. Below county (and township where it exists) in the admin_level=* hierarchy of states, incorporated municipalities include "city," "town" and "village." Beyond this prototypical structure (and broadly speaking), some regional generalizations emerge: found in about one-third of states (most Midwestern states, some New England states) is a government "between" county and city called "township," while in New England, governments tend toward weak-county / strong-town. The US Department of Commerce's Census Bureau re-categorizes these administrative subdivisions every five years, with OSM usually aligning, though sometimes diverging: exceptions are noted below due to slightly differing definitions and/or OSM consensus that has emerged. Note that the Census Bureau tends to "make everything a county" (or county equivalent), whereas OSM strives to more strictly denote things "as they actually are."

Instructions: in the US, tag a truly administrative / government boundary relation with boundary=administrative and admin_level=* where the value of admin_level=* (4 through 10) is guided by this table and wiki. Find the row with the state, District, Territory or Commonwealth in question (if not found, use "prototypical"), then find the administrative subdivision in question across that row. The number from the top of the resulting column is the value of admin_level=*. Quality assure (test/check) here.

"Quicker, easier" approach: you may wish to see also United States/Boundaries, a novice-friendlier, more descriptive, less prescriptive wiki to accompany this one.

admin_level=*	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
State, District, Territory or Commonwealth
	District of Columbia	N/A	N/A	N/A	As its administrative role was legally dissolved, see footnote in 6 column; Washington is NOT an 8	Ward (there are eight)	Neighborhood tagged as place=suburb
	The prototypical state admin_level=* structure for states not listed below:	N/A	County	In states where these exist, Civil township or any Minor civil division (MCD) which is a government. See Township (Civil township)	(incorporated) City (incorporated) Town (in some states) (incorporated) Village (in some states)	N/A	N/A
	Alaska	N/A	Borough	N/A	City	N/A	Neighborhood
	California	N/A	County	N/A	(incorporated) City (incorporated) Town (synonymous by law)	In Orange County cities where these exist, "Planning Area" (sometimes unofficially called "Village"), as defined by a city.	In cities or towns where these exist, Neighborhood, though landuse=residential + name=* may be effective or preferred
	Connecticut	N/A	Regional COG	N/A	Town	City Borough Village	In towns where these exist, Neighborhood
	Florida	N/A	County	Central Florida Tourism Oversight District in flux as of 2023 Disney v. DeSantis litigation	City Town Village	N/A
	Hawaii	N/A	County	N/A
	Illinois	N/A	County	Township Precinct	City Village (incorporated) Town	N/A
	Louisiana	N/A	Parish	N/A	City Town Village	In cities or towns where these exist, Ward	In cities or towns where these exist, Neighborhood
	Maine	N/A	County	N/A	City Town Plantation (incorporated) Township (unincorporated)	Suburb (of a city) Village (in a township)	Neighborhood (if there's an organized neighborhood association)
	Massachusetts	N/A	County	N/A	Town	Precinct	N/A
		N/A	County	N/A	City	Ward (Boston has Districts and Wards)	Precinct
	Michigan	N/A	County	N/A	City	N/A
				Township Charter Township	Village	N/A
	Minnesota	N/A	County	Township Town	City	N/A	Neighborhood
	Mississippi	N/A	County	N/A	City.	N/A
	Nebraska	N/A	County	Township Precinct	City Village	N/A
	Nevada	N/A	County	Township	City	N/A
	New Hampshire	N/A	County	N/A	Town Unincorporated Township Organized Gore, Grant, Purchase, Location	N/A
		N/A	County	N/A	City	Ward	N/A
	New Jersey	N/A	County	N/A	Borough City Town Township Village	Ward (Newark has five)	N/A
	New York	New York City	County	Borough	N/A	N/A	Community District / Community Board
		N/A	County	City	Ward, district, precinct	N/A
				Town	Village	N/A
					Hamlet, City of Sherrill	N/A
	Ohio	N/A	County (details)	Township (details)	City Village	N/A	"Neighborhood"
	Pennsylvania	N/A	County	N/A	City Borough/Boro Township Town (Bloomsburg)	N/A	Neighborhood (Pittsburgh) Planning Analysis Section (Philadelphia)
	Rhode Island	N/A	County	N/A	City Town	N/A
	South Dakota	N/A	County	Township	City Community Improvement District Village Town	Ward	Neighborhood Homeowner's Associations (both within cities and outside of cities) Ward Subdivisions (where those exist)
	Tennessee	Grand Division	County	N/A	City	N/A
	Utah	N/A	County	Metro township	City Town	N/A
	Vermont	N/A	County	N/A	Town	In towns where these exist, incorporated Village	N/A
					City	District	Ward
					Gore	N/A
	Virginia	N/A	County	N/A	Town Unincorporated community (colloquially called "town," but legally distinct), might be entered as a node	N/A
		N/A	City (all are Independent Cities)	N/A
	Wisconsin	N/A	County	Town	City Village	N/A
	American Samoa	N/A	Municipality as District	County	Village	N/A
		N/A	Municipality as Unorganized Atoll	N/A
	Guam	N/A	Municipality as Village	N/A
	Northern Mariana Islands	N/A	Municipality as Island, Island group	N/A
	Puerto Rico	N/A	Municipio (Municipality)	N/A	N/A	Barrio (Ward)	Sector or Sub-barrio (Section or Village)
	United States Virgin Islands	N/A	Municipality as District	N/A	Subdistrict	Quarter	Estate
	United States Minor Outlying Islands	N/A
	State with Consolidated city-county (CCC)	N/A	Consolidated city-county (the CCC's County)	N/A	the CCC's City (coterminous with its county); See Note	N/A
	Specific instances of ICs in Maryland Missouri Nevada	N/A	Independent Cities (ICs) Baltimore Saint Louis Carson City	N/A

Native American Indian reservations

There is emerging consensus on how to tag United States/American Indian reservations. Different reservations have varying levels of interaction with local, state, and federal governments. These boundaries often cross state lines (in the case of the Akwesasne Kanien'kehá:ka, a national border as well). These relationships are too complex to logically shoehorn into a hierarchical scheme like admin_level=*. A preferred approach is to tag these with boundary=aboriginal_lands, omitting any admin_level=* tag. (The tag combination boundary=protected_area + protect_class=24 is an older, discouraged method still found in OSM). There are uses of admin_level=* with these, for example, there are admin_level=7 Districts found at the Tohono O'odham Nation, whereas the Nation itself is not tagged with admin_level=* (of value 6 or any other value). Similar are Agency subdivisions of the Navajo Nation, also tagged admin_level=7. This might imply these Districts or Agencies "subordinate to" a "next level up" in the hierarchy (of Pima, Pinal and/or Maricopa or other Counties, or Arizona, New Mexico, Utah or the USA), though in reality, such assumptions should not necessarily be made without a full understanding of context.

A complication are state recognized tribes in the US, as individual sovereign states recognize these tribes while the (federal) US Bureau of Indian Affairs does not. Also, specific distinctions should respect the unique entities of Hawaiian home land, Alaska Native tribal entities, Pueblo, Oklahoma's Tribal Jurisdictional Areas (a subset of Oklahoma's Tribal Statistical Areas) and Off-reservation trust land. In the Navajo Nation there is a possibly subordinate jurisdiction known as a Chapter house (Áłah nidaʼadleeh dah bighan; while there are over 100 of these and they've existed for about a century, "input given to the delegates during such meetings is not legally binding"). Wikipedia states "tribal sovereignty is a form of parallel sovereignty within the U.S. constitutional framework, constrained by but not subordinate to other sovereign entities", where a map of the contiguous US (lower 48 states) with reservation lands excluded displays. In that light, admin_level=2 or even no admin_level=* may be appropriate on these (called "First Nations" in Canada, to give a neighboring flavor to the semantics). Several tagging solutions have been proposed, many have challenges. A "case-by-case" approach has emerged, allowing "what the local people say about their land" to evolve into many different approaches. This is often a single boundary to represent "the land and the people" (together), tagged boundary=aboriginal_lands, with additional specific tagging on any specific datum regarding language and other local tagging practices. Other possibilities could include multiple (multi)polygons, and/or "a node to represent a village," or many others. Again, it is best practice for OSM to represent what the local practice is as specified by "the people of the land."

Approved is boundary=aboriginal_lands, though boundary=protected_area + protect_class=24 (omitting any admin_level=* in either case) was used to mean the same thing. A 2019 discussion and vote concluded for the two-tag convention to be complemented with the single tag boundary=aboriginal_lands, both receive identical Carto rendering.

Regions in the USA

Some assert that "regions" of the United States of America exist, as they are frequently referred to by its citizens, though strictly speaking they are geographic (and possibly cultural) regions, not administrative entities in their own right. Hence these should not be assigned admin_level=3. There are four major regions, colloquially referred to as "the Northeast," "the Midwest," "the South" and "the West:" respectively, Northeastern_United_States, Midwestern_United_States, Southern_United_States and Western_United_States (all containing further subdivisions above the state level). See List_of_regions_of_the_United_States.

State divisions

The three "Grand Divisions" of Tennessee, which divide the state into three regions, are the only state divisions in the US, and should be tagged admin_level=5 and place=region. Future state divisions should follow the same convention.

The following Overpass query should return the exhaustive list of state divisions in the US (currently only the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee):

[out:json];
area[wikidata=Q30]->.usa; // Q30 = United States
relation[admin_level=5][place=region](area.usa);
out tags;

Not all boundaries are administrative

Census Designated Places (CDPs) are boundaries maintained by the Census Bureau (a division of the United States Department of Commerce) for statistical purposes. CDPs should be tagged boundary=census, ideally without an admin_level=* tag. In 2009, many CDPs were imported from TIGER as boundary=administrative + admin_level=8, but the talk-us mailing list reached a consensus to treat them as non-administrative boundaries. Additionally, the Census Bureau has revised its methodology regarding CDPs since 2009, causing many imported boundaries to fall out of date. There is some degree of support for removing the least relevant CDPs from OSM, but note that CDPs are relevant in some parts of the country, such as Alaska, where they are useful to further subdivide the Unorganized Borough by mutual agreement between the Census Bureau and the state of Alaska.

While boundary=census remains useful in some circumstances, other Census Bureau definitions, such as "Metropolitan Statistical Area" (MSA) should not be entered into OSM as boundaries. According to the US Government (Departments of Labor and Commerce, Executive Office of the President's Office of Management and Budget), "the delineations are intended to provide a nationally consistent set of geographic areas for collecting, tabulating, and publishing federal statistics." Therefore, MSAs and similar entities (μSAs, CSAs, PSAs, CBSAs...) are statistical, not administrative boundaries. (See also Relations are not categories.) Data consumers that need to filter features by statistical area can cross-reference Wikidata, as demonstrated by this Sophox query for cities within the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland CSA.

So-called special districts, like Councils of Governments (COGs), Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and California's Local Agency Formation Commissions (LAFCOs), were proposed in 2012 to be tagged boundary=administrative + admin_level=5. However, these proposals did not gain substantial consensus, so please do not enter these with such tags. Also, boundary=school is found on school district boundaries, though it is quite rare: a recent taginfo shows boundary=administrative makes up about 88% of millions of OSM's boundary=* tags, yet there are fewer than 20 boundary=school (or boundary=School) tags in all of OSM.

The Census Bureau offers a helpful-to-OSM recognition of five local government types in the US. Three are general-purpose governments: county (and "county equivalent"), township and municipal governments. The other two are special-purpose governments: special district governments and school district governments. OSM recognizes via consensus that the first three are tagged boundary=administrative + admin_level=6, 7, 8 (respectively). The latter two are not tagged boundary=administrative, but rather are tagged as in the previous paragraph (that is, not at all, perhaps with an unusual tag that emerges like boundary=COG or only very rarely).

Consolidated city-counties, agglomeration of counties, independent cities, cities extending into multiple counties

Consolidated city-counties

As of 2024, 40 Consolidated city-counties (CCCs) are found across the US: in Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin. With the exception of New York City, all CCCs span a single county. Even with many subtle distinctions in how CCCs differ from one another, they should be tagged admin_level=6.

Currently there is emerging consensus whether single-county CCCs are to be "tagged twice" with two coterminous relations tagged boundary=administrative: one with admin_level=6 representing the county and another with admin_level=8 representing the city. A tag of border_type=county;city can sometimes be found. See Talk:United_States/Boundaries.

Some de jure CCCs (for example, San Francisco) are tagged only admin_level=8 (no additional coterminous polygon tagged admin_level=6) perhaps also with a border_type=county;city tag. If so, it is not known if this is a shortcut, "tagging for a renderer" or a deliberate omission of the city boundary. See Talk:United_States/Boundaries.

Washington, Distrct of Columbia is unique in OSM, as a federal-district-city (with neighborhoods). "Washington" (as a city) is tagged boundary=place + place=city, not boundary=administrative + admin_level=8 (historically vestigial). See Talk:United_States/Boundaries.

Agglomeration of counties

A CCC normally consists of a single county-city pair, but New York City is a unique case of a consolidated city-county of multiple counties. Note the relationship between this city and its agglomeration of counties is different than a city merely extending into multiple counties (see below).

New York City should be tagged admin_level=5 and place=city while the agglomerated counties of Bronx County, Kings County, New York County, Queens County, and Richmond County should be tagged admin_level=6 and place=county. (Incidentally, all five counties in New York City are also single-pair CCCs with a borough (city equivalent) coextensive with its respective county: The Bronx with Bronx County, Brooklyn with Kings County, Manhattan with New York County, Queens with Queens County, and Staten Island with Richmond County.)

If other single-pair CCCs grow by agglomerating multiple counties (versus extending into multiple counties), the city and agglomerated counties should be tagged consistent with New York City (see Discussion).

The following Overpass query should return the exhaustive list of consolidated city-county of multiple counties in the US (only New York City as of 2024-Q4):

[out:json];
area[wikidata=Q30]->.usa; // Q30 = United States
relation[admin_level=5][place=city](area.usa);
out tags;

Independent cities

An Independent city (IC) is "a city not in the territory of any county or counties." ICs differ from CCCs as there is only one relation to tag (admin_level=6, not admin_level=8, nor both, as in the case of all but one of US's CCCs, New York City). ICs subordinate directly to their state (admin_level=4) with no intervening county, in what might be thought of as "a city with administrative level of (an urbanized) county, but not a county." In an example of consistency with the Census Bureau (and by virtue that admin_level=6 semantically means county/equivalent in all 50 states, but not all of USA), OSM treats ICs as "county equivalents." 38 of 41 ICs in the USA are in Virginia, whose state constitution treats all incorporated municipalities as ICs. ICs should also have place=city tag.

The following Overpass query should return the exhaustive list of independent cities in the US (41 total as of 2024-Q4):

[out:json];
area[wikidata=Q30]->.usa; // Q30 = United States
relation[admin_level=6][place=city](area.usa);
out tags;

Cities extending into multiple counties

Although most cities (usually admin_level=8) are located within a single county (always admin_level=6), there are also hundreds extending into multiple counties. For example, Dallas is primarily within Dallas County but also extends into ("somewhat egresses") Collin County, Denton County, Kaufman County, and Rockwall County (all in Texas).

These cities are not CCCs or ICs but are instead regular cities that incidentally have boundaries extending into multiple counties. They should be tagged "normally," that is to say, "city tagging on the city boundary" and "county tagging on the county boundaries."

Townships, some Districts, Agencies... as divisions of Native American Nations

Townships (admin_level=7) are found in about one-third of states (admin_level=4) and subordinate directly to a county (admin_level=6), yet are not a city/town/village (admin_level=8). The political/administrative relationships between these entities is specific to each state and can be quite complicated, with many nuanced "exceptions" to what seem like straightforward "rules." In fact, the interplay between these political entities can be so complicated that at least one OSM Contributor asserts that many common assumptions about them are wholly false and the concept of hierarchical admin_level=* often completely breaks down; see here.

As noted above in United_States_admin_level#Native_American_Indian_reservations, there are 'Districts' and 'Agencies' tagged admin_level=7 which subordinate to Native American Nations as polygons tagged boundary=aboriginal_lands with no admin_level=* tag (in Arizona/Four Corners states, the Dakotas). Despite sharing the same admin_level=* value, these (Townships, Districts, Agencies...) are not equivalent. Again, not just in the USA, but anywhere in the world in OSM, it is not necessarily true that an entity with a particular admin_level=* value is "the same sort of administrative / political entity" as another which happens to share the same admin_level=* value. In some cases (usually at a hierarchically higher-level), such as states (admin_level=4), this can be said to be "mostly true," but note that there are Territories, Commonwealths and a District which are also admin_level=4, yet differ completely from both states and one another.

Unincorporated areas

In US local government, an unincorporated area generally refers to the part of a county which is outside any incorporated municipality. Please see the Wikipedia article, as the topic is somewhat complex: most states have granted some form of "home rule," so that county commissions (or boards or councils) have the same powers in these areas as city councils or town councils have in their respective incorporated areas. Some states instead put these powers in the hands of "townships," minor civil divisions (MCDs) of each county, called "towns" in some states. Some states have no unincorporated land areas; these include Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island, although these states all have communities that are not separately incorporated but are part of a larger municipality. Due to differences in state laws regarding the incorporation of communities, there is great variation in the distribution and nature of unincorporated areas.

It does not appear OSM needs to explicitly delineate unincorporated areas in boundary=administrative relations. For these communities, tag a node with place=* and name=*, as appropriate, omitting the admin_level=* tag in all cases (on a node). See United_States/Tags#Places for guidance. Such nodes do render and are valid in other use cases like geocoders.

However, it is emerging (2024-Q1) that in three New England states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont) there are unincorporated boundaries (called "township" or "unorganized_town" or "gore") which are denoted boundary=administrative admin_level=8. These can be identified as distinct with an additional tag of border_type=township or border_type=gore (in Maine) or border_type=unorganized_town or border_type=gore (in Vermont), although there are quite similar incorporated admin_level=8 entities in these three states which can be identified (as distinct from unincorporated townships) from their tags border_type=plantation, border_type=town, border_type=city, (in Maine), border_type=town or border_type=city (in Vermont), or something with a value of border_type=* different from "township" (in New Hampshire). Except for areas in these three states, minimal instances of unincorporated polygons are found in the USA: again, a node as described above seems the best way to express unincorporated areas, much less so in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont where these are explicitly tagged boundary=administrative admin_level=8 and border_type=*, the latter tag having specific values found in this paragraph or the table rows for these three states (which express whether what is tagged is incorporated or unincorporated).

While this wiki is US-based, note a talk-ca First nations boundary tagging thread which explores (by US- and Canada-based Contributors) this wide topic, including how complex unincorporated boundaries e.g. 11305308 11305308 might be tagged. The topic is complex; it is easily confused or muddied and often sensitive. As of 2023, it seems flexible with a "case-by-case" approach ("what the people of the land say") having emerged. Note that from this talk-ca thread, some places in Canada do map unincorporated areas, even as highly complex as these (multi)polygons can be.

Federal enclaves, extraterritorial jurisdiction

A US federal enclave is a parcel of federal property within a state that is under the "Special Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction of the United States." Last officially tabulated in 1960, there were about 5,000 such enclaves, with about one million people living on them. These numbers are undoubtedly lower today because many of these areas were military bases that have been closed and transferred out of federal ownership. However, many remain, especially in Alaska and Hawaii. Since the late 1950s, it has been official federal policy that the states should have "full concurrent jurisdiction" on all federal enclaves. Best tagging practices to achieve this goal of "both federal and state concurrent jurisdictions" are unknown, suggestions are welcome. It may be that two separate relations suffice, similar to consolidated city-counties (CCCs), one tagged admin_level=2, the other tagged admin_level=4. Or, some logical relational magic "punches out a hole" in the larger context, this seems complex.

The US federal government maintains exclusive jurisdiction over military installations (Department of Defense) and American embassies and consulates in foreign countries (Department of State). Little to no OSM consensus has emerged regarding boundary=administrative tags on these entities.

The United States exercises some degree of extraterritorial jurisdiction in other areas. These include Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, a 45 mile² (117 km²) area of land along Guantánamo Bay, Cuba as well as American scientific research stations in Antarctica: Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, McMurdo Station and Palmer Station are under American jurisdiction, but held without sovereignty as per the Antarctic Treaty. Little to no OSM consensus has emerged regarding boundary=administrative tags on these entities.

Wards

The inclusion of "ward" as a usually admin_level=9-valued tag has become increasingly questioned as "not administrative (as in a government), but rather a voting district, or similar." Before applying boundary=administrative + admin_level=9 to a "ward," consider whether boundary=political, possibly with political_division=*, is more correct in that particular case: if a ward is only distinguished for electoral purposes, tag it as boundary=political + political_division=ward. In cities which contain both wards and neighborhoods (New Orleans?), it may make sense to tag the wards admin_level=9 and the neighborhoods admin_level=10, to preserve this hierarchy. Additionally, if it can be determined that "wards" do not accurately represent a truly administrative "government" as defined here (whether at admin_level=9 or another value) in any particular state, District, Territory, or Commonwealth, please correct the corresponding table entry by deleting "Ward" as a possible value.

In Dallas, Texas, six wards were once in existence, precursors to today's City Council districts. While references to wards might still exist on signs and in local vernacular, wards no longer exist legally, even as some area residents still identify certain communities, especially those that have been a part of the city since incorporation, as being "wards" of the city.

Homeowner associations, CIDs, MTIPs

In the US, a homeowner association (HOA) is a private association formed by a real estate developer for the purpose of marketing, managing, and selling homes and lots in a residential subdivision. OSM has not reached a consensus on tagging HOAs in the US. It may be that consensus emerges to tag them boundary=administrative + admin_level=10 on a state-by-state basis, but that has not occurred. It may emerge that boundary=HOA is appropriate if it is determined (perhaps in a particular state with a particular body of HOA law, or lack thereof) that HOAs are not administrative boundaries. Ongoing legal discussions and emerging case law in many states continue to determine whether HOAs are de jure governments, even if they are de facto communities as a municipal corporation. It has begun to emerge, but is not universal, that landuse=residential + name=* tags appropriately denote these semantics without the need to additionally tag boundary=* or admin_level=* with any particular values.

The fastest-growing form of housing in the US today are common-interest developments (CIDs), a category of housing that includes planned unit (or urban) developments (PUDs) of single-family homes, condominiums and cooperative apartments. An alternative to CIDs is the multiple-tenant income property (MTIP), known in the United Kingdom as "housing estates." CIDs and MTIPs have fundamentally different forms of governance from each other. As with HOAs, no OSM consensus has emerged for CIDs, PUDs or MTIPs with regard to boundary=* or admin_level=*.

See also

• United States/Boundaries, a novice-friendlier, more descriptive, less prescriptive wiki to accompany this one.
• Admin level and Tag:boundary=administrative with tables allowing comparison between admin_level=* values among countries
• United States municipalities for a listing and reference information on US admin_level=8 entities.
• [12] describes which MCDs are governments starting on page 8-12.
• OSM France map showing Admin Levels
• Great Lakes#Boundaries