Quoth Wikipedia, "Local government in New Jersey is more complex than in most U.S. states."
In one way, sure. But for the map-makers? It's much simpler.
Other states have: unincorporated areas (part of a county but not any municipality); "townships" (or in some states, confusingly, just "towns") that exist inbetween the level of counties and municipalities, but not every municipality is part of one; cities that extend into multiple counties; villages that extend into multiple townships; oh, and did I mention that not everywhere in one of these "ownships needs to be in a village at all, nor are townships guaranteed to contain any villages? (Of course, in some states, "township" is just another sort of municipality, so of course they don't contain any villages; that's how it is in New Jersey, for instance. That isn't really strange.) Oh and more than half the land area of Alaska isn't any party of any borough (what they have instead of counties), but does contain various municipalities. And then there's New York City -- though that's actually less bad than some of the things above, as while it may reverse the usual inclusions, at least the boundaries all line up. (Also some cities in Virginia are further divided into "boroughs", but again that's a case where at least the boundaries all line up.)
In New Jersey, everything is divided into 21 counties, and each county is divided entirely into municipalities. There's nothing left out, no boundary-crossing, no level-skipping or level-reversing... just two clean levels of subdivision.
Yeah, so we have five "types" and who-knows-how-many "forms" of local government, and so far as I can tell the "types" don't actually mean anything except historically. But if you just want to make a map, you don't need to know any of that.
Pennsylvania might be similar. But for some reason the people who wrote the many WP articles about local government in the US didn't think this was an important thing to focus on, and so it's not so easy to tell...
-Harry
In one way, sure. But for the map-makers? It's much simpler.
Other states have: unincorporated areas (part of a county but not any municipality); "townships" (or in some states, confusingly, just "towns") that exist inbetween the level of counties and municipalities, but not every municipality is part of one; cities that extend into multiple counties; villages that extend into multiple townships; oh, and did I mention that not everywhere in one of these "ownships needs to be in a village at all, nor are townships guaranteed to contain any villages? (Of course, in some states, "township" is just another sort of municipality, so of course they don't contain any villages; that's how it is in New Jersey, for instance. That isn't really strange.) Oh and more than half the land area of Alaska isn't any party of any borough (what they have instead of counties), but does contain various municipalities. And then there's New York City -- though that's actually less bad than some of the things above, as while it may reverse the usual inclusions, at least the boundaries all line up. (Also some cities in Virginia are further divided into "boroughs", but again that's a case where at least the boundaries all line up.)
In New Jersey, everything is divided into 21 counties, and each county is divided entirely into municipalities. There's nothing left out, no boundary-crossing, no level-skipping or level-reversing... just two clean levels of subdivision.
Yeah, so we have five "types" and who-knows-how-many "forms" of local government, and so far as I can tell the "types" don't actually mean anything except historically. But if you just want to make a map, you don't need to know any of that.
Pennsylvania might be similar. But for some reason the people who wrote the many WP articles about local government in the US didn't think this was an important thing to focus on, and so it's not so easy to tell...
-Harry
