You got the distinction I was making. Governmental units are quite specific to boundaries, and therefore taxes and services will vary greatly across lines. I used to work for my city government and that made me sensitive to these issues in a way few others can appreciate.
From the outside, though, a “city” is an economic, cultural, transportation, vacation, sports, media, or other thing. I don’t care where the boundary lines are in Seattle or Charlotte or Boise. When I drive down to New York I feel the city proper from 50 miles out. And that’s true whether I approach it from upstate, Connecticut or New Jersey. In that way, state boundary lines are also in today’s world increasingly erasable. Even nations often have fuzzy boundaries in every way but governmental. Imaginary lines drawn on the earth are a fundamentally poor way to look at human culture.
Pennsylvania only has one incorporated “town” – Bloomsburg. All other incorporated municipal government areas are cities, townships, or boroughs. Villages are unincorporated areas.
That may be true in your state but is not the norm. Cities, towns, and villages have home rule if granted home rule to any municipality. In SC, it is a distinction in name only, and the voters of the incorporation also vote on the name and its form of government ("weak mayor, “strong mayor,”
etc.
In SC, public service districts have been set up to provide facilities for unincorporated county areas. They provide waste removal services, fire departments, etc. The county, however, still polices those areas by their deputies.
The city of Chicago was originally laid out by an agency of the state of Illinois (which owned the property), the Canal Trustees Commission. It was called “the town of Chicago,” and additions were made by other state agencies, such as the School Trustees. (Section 16 in every township was designated for schools.) “Township” here refers to the six-mile square of land formed by surveyors pursuant to the federal government legislation to survey all the land west of the Mississippi, East of the Ohio, and North of Tenn. Each section consisted of section lines and township lines, but that’s another issue. “Townships” can also refer to other geopolitical areas. In fact, Thornton Township, much in the news today, is in the city of Chicago. The original plat of Chicago is called “the Original Town of Chicago.”
That is precisely the same situation as in Connecticut. I also addressed how other states differ.
However, even while there are few practical differences, a “city” charter is still distinct from any other municipal charter. The US Census bureau, for instance, treats cities differently than towns, although this is primarily an historical artifact.
It is probably most distinctly a matter of civic pride or community identity as to whether residents wish to refer to their area as a town or city.
No part of Thornton Township is inside the City of Chicago. Thornton Township is south of Chicago. In 1902 the voters of the City of Chicago voted to abolish all of the township governments within Chicago, but other township governments remain in Cook County. When the city annexed some property in DuPage County, Addison Township did come along for the ride, but as of the 2010 census, no one lives in the Addison Township part of Chicago. (As of the 2000 census, either 2 or 4 people, I forget which, lived there in two households.)
Illinois has 3 forms of municipal government: City, village, and incorporated town. “Incorporated towns” are grandfathered in and no new incorporated towns can be formed. There are 19 remaining incorporated towns.
A township government is an optional subdistrict of a county. 85 Illinois counties have township governments. Township governments were established mainly to provide county services in the days when it could take two or three days to travel to the county seat from the far reaches of the county. Nowdays, their main functions are to provide certain social services, clear snow on roads in unincorporated areas, and run cemeteries. Many contend that their primary function is to provide jobs for politically connected people.
Fun fact: Cicero Illinois is both an incorporated town and a township!
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
The administrative divisions of New York are the various units of government that provide local government services in the state of New York.
The state is divided into counties, cities, towns, and villages, which are all municipal corporations with their own government that provide most local government services. Whether a municipality is defined as a city, town, or village is not dependent on population or land area, but rather by the form of government selected by the residents and approved by the state legislature.
[/QUOTE]
What we actually call it is another matter entirely. When I go from my home in my town to Wal-Mart (inside the city limits), I say “I’m going into town, Do you need anything while I’m there?” On the other hand, my cousin used to complain all the time about people objecting to her saying “I’m going into the village”, when the local organization was very much an incorporated ‘village’, just because the locals didn’t like the way she said it. To be fair, she was saying it specifically to tweak/troll her fellow ‘villagers’, so there’s that
So basically, no, there ain’t no definition. It’s all extremely local. And probably based mostly on people trying to piss each other off.
Right. In Virginia, for example, the difference between a town and a city is that a town has a town charter and a city has a city charter. City charters grant legislative independence from the county in which the city is situated, but correspondingly require the city to provide services that would otherwise have been provided by the county. There’s nothing in the law or the current set of towns and cities in Virginia that speaks of size, either in terms of area or population, as being important. The “City” of Manassas Park is literally no more than a few blocks of suburban sprawl, two square miles and about ten thousand people, but it is a full city with full city rights. Compare that to the Town of Leesburg - larger in area, larger in population, and filled with much more history, but still “only” a town.
There’s nothing in US federal law (or the Constitution) that requires any specific type of city or town system. A state could conceivably come up with whatever creative local jurisdictions it wanted to (Community of Settlement, Neighbor Zone of Two Mayors, Council-Driven Varkodee, FarmZone Governorate, whatever), as long as what they chose still preserved a republican form of government.
Another Wisconsin factoid: There can be both a town and a city of the same name (There is both a Town of Kaukauna and a city if Kaukauna). Also, plenty of places have a post office but no self rule) (Ex: Fish Creek is governed by the town of Gibraltar).
Sometimes places stay part of a town even if they are inside / very near a city. See Las Vegas / Paradise Las Vegas isn't Las Vegas - YouTube
