United States municipalities
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
In the United States, at the state level (not a territory or commonwealth), a "municipality" is a city or town that has corporate status and local government. These are usually, but not always tagged boundary=administrative + admin_level=8. This table puts some scope around some states' unusual treatment of what is locally-known (in that state) as a "municipality."
| State, Territory, Commonwealth or District | Description | admin_level=8 | WP Category/List | WP ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska | Several distinctly-tagged exceptional cases; under construction. See the "big table" noted below. | under construction | ||
| California | California has two names for incorporated municipalities, cities and towns, declared "synomous by law." In California, San Francisco is simultaneously a city (a municipal corporation) and a county (an administrative division of a state), known as "The City and County of San Francisco" tagged boundary=administrative + admin_level=8 + border_type=county;city + place=city. A county-level co-terminous polygon was deleted as a legally-dissolved historical vestige, a name-only "nomenclature" case (City and County of...). | city, town | [1] | [2] |
| Colorado | Colorado has two basic divisions for incorporated municipalities, towns and cities, though Colorado law makes relatively few distinctions between the two. "In general, cities are more populous than towns, although the towns of Castle Rock and Parker have more than 45,000 residents each, while the city of Black Hawk has fewer than 120 residents." Village and civil townships are not civil divisions in the state of Colorado, although the cities or towns may have 'Village' in the name. In Colorado, Denver and Broomfield are simultaneously cities (municipal corporations) and counties (administrative divisions of a state), each known as a "consolidated city-county" tagged boundary=administrative + admin_level=8 + border_type=county;city + place=city. County-level polygons were deleted as cases of "nomenclature only" (City and County of...). | town, city | [3] | [4] |
| District of Columbia | Washington is tagged boundary=place + place=city, while the co-terminous District of Columbia is tagged boundary=administrative + admin_level=4 (but not border_type=state). See the "big table" noted below. | none | ||
| Florida | "Municipalities in Florida may be called towns, cities, or villages, but there is no legal distinction between the different terms." "All municipalities are located within a county and the county jurisdiction overlays the municipal jurisdiction." There is unincorporated territory in Florida. Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District, a drainage district with city-like powers, is admin_level=7 (and contains two admin_level=8 cities). As of February 27, 2023, Reedy Creek Improvement District is renamed "Central Florida Tourism Oversight District." | town, city, village | [5] | [6] |
| Hawaii | "There are no municipalities in Hawaii" and "All local government is at the county level." The "City and County of Honolulu" (the entire island of Oahu) has a "Honolulu city" subset tagged as the locality of the volcanic ridge defining the traditional "urban" boundary: boundary=place + place=city. | none | [7] | [8] |
| Indiana | Indianapolis, Marion County and to some degree, geographically "included" cities (as Unigov), while for certain government / taxation reasons, not geographically "excluded" cities are together a set of exceptional cases. See the "big table" noted below. | city, town | [9] | [10] |
| Maryland | Maryland has 23 counties and one independent city (Baltimore) each of which should be admin_level=6. Maryland's counties oversee many of the administrative duties that other states leave to sub-county governments, so there are no authority-wielding minor civil divisions, and relatively few incorporated cities and towns. The US Census Bureau uses Maryland's election districts in the same statistical role as other states' minor civil divisions, so it might seem that election districts could be tagged admin_level=7. Strictly speaking, statistical boundaries are not boundary=administratives, so these election districts shouldn't be tagged with boundary=administrative or an admin_level=* of any value.
Since most population centers are unincorporated, the majority of admin_level=8 regions in Maryland are Census Designated Places (CDPs). However, since a discussion on talk-us in 2012,[1] tagging CDPs with admin_level=8 has fallen out of favor. Today, boundary=census remains a useful tag only in some limited circumstances, ideally without an admin_level=* tag. |
city, town, village, CDP(?) | link | link |
| Massachusetts | Nantucket is a single relation admin_level=6 = + border_type=town;county by consensus. Also, there remains significant conflation in Wikidata between the Town and the island that needs to be cleaned up. See the "big table" noted below. | One exceptional case: Nantucket as 6, not 8 | [11] | [12] |
| New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont Emerging (2024-Q1) |
These three New England states see tagging emerging to tag unincorporated areas (townships, gores, purchases...) with admin_level=8. This table row entry is made to avoid confusion with these "as if they were" municipalities, as they are not really those, but could be confused with them because admin_level=8 tagging is common or frequent with US municipalities (in states, not territories or commonwealths). | unincorporated_place (for many different enties like townships, gores, purchases...) | ||
| New Jersey | "Each type of municipality has equal legal standing, rights, and powers as any other type or form." Types are borough, city, town, township, and village. "There is no unincorporated territory." | borough, city, town, township, village | [13] | [14] |
| New York | New York City is located in five different counties. "The city today consists of the entire area of five counties (named New York, Kings, Queens, Bronx, and Richmond). While these counties exercise no direct county government, boroughs — with boundaries coterminus with the county boundaries, effectively county equivalents — each have a Borough Board made up of the Borough President, the borough's district council members, and the chairpersons of the borough's community boards," exercising relatively little effective government administration, but "not zero," either. "In New York, a town is the major division of each county (excluding the five counties that comprise New York City)." "Whereas cities and villages can cross county boundaries, all towns in New York are within a single county." "Villages are a third layer of government, which are usually overlaid inside a town, and co-administer with the town, county, and state." "The village of Pomona (red) in Rockland County is partly within two different towns." | city, hamlet (subordinate to county); village, city of Sherrill (subordinate to town, town is subordinate to county) | [15] [16] | [17] |
| Pennsylvania | "After the county level, everyone in Pennsylvania lives under the jurisdiction of at least two types of municipal governments [municipalities, and school districts]." "The Constitution of Pennsylvania mentions only three types of non-school related municipal divisions; city, borough, and township. Bloomsburg however, is the only incorporated town in Pennsylvania but is administered by the borough code and is classified (for legal purposes) as such by the state." "School districts can comprise of one single municipality, like the School District of Philadelphia or can comprise of multiple municipalities." However, school districts can exist in multiple counties, and multiple counties can exist in a school district. [18] It can be so concluded that it is inappropriate to tag school districts with any particular admin_level=*. A better tag for school districts is boundary=school but this tag is quite rare in OSM. | city, borough, township, the town of Bloomsburg | [19] | [20] |
| American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, United States Virgin Islands | In territories and commonwealths, "Municipality" has a distinct meaning as something like a county equivalent (admin_level=6) in states, different from the sense of a city or town (or similar, admin_level=8) in the 50 states. This is true even as in American Samoa, the admin_level=* immediately below Municipality (as district or unorganized atoll, denoted admin_level=6) is, in fact, called a "County" (admin_level=7). In territories and commonwealths, "municipalities" are always admin_level=6, though they are flavored with diverse names, such as subdistrict, village or municipio. | admin_level=6, not 8. American Samoa: district or unorganized atoll, CNMI, Guam: village; Puerto Rico: municipio (municipality); United States Virgin Islands: subdistrict |
See also
Especially the last two may yield more comprehensive consensus.
- admin_level
- United States admin_level, especially sections describing Independent Cities (ICs) and "Consolidated" county-cities (CCCs)
- The "big table" at Talk:United_States/Boundaries#Unique_entities_often_known_as_Consolidated_(was_Consolidated_County-Cities_CCCs)
Additional reading
- Government Organization by the US Census Bureau