I’m from the Philippines and we divide things differently here. The country is divided into provinces, which are divided into cities/municipalities, which are divided into barangays.
So I looked at a map of Washington and saw that Seattle is not its own county, but is a part of a county. So are states in the USA divided into counties, which are then divided into towns and cities?
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Counties are the division of land in a state. Counties may manage the land themselves or may have cities inside them. Cities manage their own services.
While every inch of land belongs to a state and to a county, most of the land does not belong to any city. In the city that I live, I can drive in some areas where the road is in the city and then it is not in any city (maintained by county), and then back into the city. This is because some neighborhoods chose not to Incorporate into a city, and may never do so.
Cities in USA are different from other countries. Cities are like corporations. When there are enough people in an area, they can petition the county/state to let them form a corporation and manage their own affairs. Cities are limited in geographical scope. Most of the land in US does not belong to any city.
Moreover when you think of a city in USA, it most likely is not a single entity. For example the city of Los Angeles is only one of about a dozen cities in what we usually call los Angeles. The metro Los Angeles area is home to four counties and probably 50 cities. This is because a lot of suburbs were incorporated as their own cities.
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