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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Yup you got it. There can be multiple cities/towns within a single county. Some cities sit where they are in 2 counties, maybe more but I’m not aware of any
ETA: counties also consist of land between cities and towns. Some with more unpopulated land than populated
Sometimes. There is no clear rule. States can create counties however they want and give them whatever powers they want. Counties are not equal. Some have literally no role or powers whatsoever. Some are the only local government in the area. A few have millions of residents. A couple have less than 100 inhabitants.
For most states counties have a few general powers while cities can be formed to handle the rest if the locals want to. But there are a million other variations.
Counties and municipalities are roughly the same. A county can delegate part of their responsibility to a city or town as a separate administrative unit. So in Washington there is a King County Sheriff and a complete government. The City of Seattle have their own Mayor and the Seattle Police Department. So if you need police outside the city limits you call the sheriff while if you need police within the city limits you call the police. Although for some things within the city limits the sheriff is still the one to call.
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.
A state is divided into counties or parishes, these operate as a sub-level of the state government.
For instance, states are responsible for running elections, but each county has its own election officers. For purposes of analogy, you can think of a county as being a specific location of a chain restaurant with the state being the corporate office.
Towns and cities (villages, etc) are autonomous but subject to county/state. They govern themselves, but can’t exceed explicit limits set by a state. For instance, a town can set its own local taxes and run its own schools, but can’t issue their own government-official ID because IDs are a state function.
It can get pretty complicated, and some states have “townships” which are a sub-set of county offices (but are not towns). And some developed areas are not part of any town or village, but are “unincorporated” and are managed by the county.
I think that covers it at a simple level.
Note: a state is like a country in many ways, except that states can’t issue their own money or engage in international activity unilaterally. Beyond that the states are all autonomous for internal matters or for engagement with other states as long as those engagements and local laws don’t exceed federally defined limits or get politicians voted out of office.
The challenging thing about the US, is that States have a lot more power than compared to most other countries. So giving a single explanation is going to be difficult because each State will have variations. So counties are administrative divisions of the individual states. The states are part of the federation of the USA. “Below” the counties are towns. There are several cities that are large enough that the city administration essentially governs the county. There are a few cities where the city covers multiple counties (like NY).
IIRC ( not a US resident ) counties are general areas which can consist of one of more cities, but might also just be a part of a huge city? ( for example, the boroughs of New York, which are different enough to have their own subcultures and backgrounds )
Yeah, like that. King county for instance, where Seattle is located also includes Bellevue which has its own high rise downtown skyline, but also north, south and east has a lot of smaller towns located in it.
Municipal and Political subdivisions within the United States aren’t necessarily consistent from one state to another. They’re not even necessarily consistent *within* a state.
For example in New York we have, *generally* from smallest to largest
* Village
* Town
* City
* County
* State
But New York City is an exception (it encompasses and governs five individual counties), and cities are sometimes far smaller than the towns around them (e.g. the City of Glen Cove was chartered out of the Town of Oyster Bay – it’s independently governed as a city, but the town around it is geographically far larger and has 10 times the city’s population).
Also at least in New York our municipal subdivisions have essentially nothing to do with population or land area(my village has twice the population of the City of Glen Cove and is geographically larger), and our political subdivisions ignore the municipal boundaries (we have state assembly districts for electing representatives to our state government that span county lines).
The moral of this story is threefold:
1. Trying to make sense out of anything the United States does is futile.
2. Trying to make sense out of anything New York State does is doubly futile.
3. Much like banks, the United States should never be used as an example of how to do anything. *Especially organizing a government.*
Counties can also be divided into townships.
Some cities have merged with their counties (like Louisville, Kentucky), and some cities are “independent” of any county.
Instead of counties, Louisiana has “parishes” and Alaska has “boroughs”.
Some cities are subdivided into wards and/or boroughs.
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