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108-555: Several communes of the département include Razès in their name: This Aude geographical article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Commune in France The commune ( French pronunciation: [kɔmyn] ) is a level of administrative division in the French Republic . French communes are analogous to civil townships and incorporated municipalities in

216-662: A census-designated place (CDP). A CDP is an area defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. It is a populated area that generally includes one officially designated but currently unincorporated community for which the CDP is named, plus surrounding inhabited countryside of varying dimensions, and occasionally other smaller unincorporated communities as well. Otherwise, it has no legal status. The Census Bureau designates some unincorporated areas as "unorganized territories", as defined by

324-424: A county island is surrounded on most or all sides by municipalities. In areas of sparse population, the majority of the land in any given state may be unincorporated. Some states, including North Carolina , grant extraterritorial jurisdiction to cities and towns (but rarely villages) so that they may control zoning for a limited distance into adjacent unincorporated areas, often as a precursor (and sometimes as

432-597: A local services board in Ontario. In New Brunswick, where a significant population lives in a local service district , taxation and services may come directly from the province. The entire area of the Czech Republic is divided into municipalities ; the only exceptions are four military training areas . These are parts of the regions and do not form self-governing municipalities, but are rather governed by military offices ( újezdní úřad ), which are subordinate to

540-456: A "place or area with clustered or scattered buildings, and a permanent human population (city, settlement, town, village)." No legal boundaries exist, although a corresponding "civil" record may occur, the boundaries of which may or may not match the perceived populated place. Some nations have some exceptional unincorporated areas: Many countries, especially those with many centuries of history with multiple tiers of local government, do not use

648-421: A "realm of 100,000 steeples". Parishes lacked the municipal structures of post-Revolution communes. Usually, one contained only a building committee ( conseil de fabrique ), made up of villagers, which managed the buildings of the parish church, the churchyard, and the other numerous church estates and properties, and sometimes also provided help for the poor, or even administered parish hospitals or schools. Since

756-576: A better sense of the size of a typical mainland France commune than the average area since the average includes some very large communes. In Italy , the median area of communes ( comuni ) is 22 km (8.5 sq mi); in Belgium it is 40 km (15 sq mi); in Spain it is 35 km (14 sq mi); and in Germany , the majority of Länder have communes ( Gemeinden ) with

864-445: A category currently being phased out), made up of 33,327 communes (91.1 percent of all the communes of metropolitan France), and 52.86 million inhabitants, i.e., 86.7 percent of the population of metropolitan France. These impressive results however may hide a murkier reality. In rural areas, many communes have entered a community of communes only to benefit from government funds. Often the local syndicate has been turned officially into

972-537: A community of communes, the new community of communes in fact managing only the services previously managed by the syndicate, contrary to the spirit of the law which has established the new intercommunal structures to carry out a much broader range of activities than that undertaken by the old syndicates. Some say that, should government money transfers be stopped, many of these communities of communes would revert to their former status of syndicate, or simply completely disappear in places where there were no syndicates prior to

1080-627: A council of their own, usually an Ortsvorsteher or Ortsvorsteherin (village chairman / chairwoman) is appointed by the municipal council, except in the very smallest villages. In 2000, the number of unincorporated areas in Germany, called gemeindefreie Gebiete (municipality-free areas) or singular gemeindefreies Gebiet , was 295 with a total area of 4,890 km (1,890 sq mi) and around 1.4% of its territory. However, these are mostly unpopulated areas such as forests, lakes and their surroundings, military training areas, and

1188-431: A county or a higher authority can be found. There are only a few exceptions: Furthermore, two regions without permanent habitation have no communes: In metropolitan France , the average area of a commune in 2004 was 14.88 square kilometres (5.75 sq mi). The median area of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was even smaller, at 10.73 square kilometres (4.14 sq mi). The median area gives

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1296-589: A density of communes as France, and even there an extensive merger movement has started in the last 10 years. To better grasp the staggering number of communes in France, two comparisons can be made: First, of the original 15 member states of the European Union there are approximately 75,000 communes; France alone, which comprises 16 percent of the population of the EU-15, had nearly half of its communes. Second,

1404-499: A descriptive name, followed by the designation "unorganized territory". Unorganized territories were first used for statistical purposes in conjunction with the 1960 census. At the 2000 census there were 305 of these territories within the United States. Their total land area was 85,392 square miles (221,165 km ) and they had a total population of 247,331. South Dakota had the most unorganized territories, 102, as well as

1512-453: A few other unique cases, almost all of Australia is part of an LGA. Unincorporated areas are often in remote locations, cover vast areas, or have very small populations. Postal addresses in unincorporated areas, as in other parts of Australia, normally use the suburb or locality names gazetted by the relevant state or territorial government. Thus, any ambiguity regarding addresses rarely exists in unincorporated areas. In Canada, depending on

1620-469: A form of direct democracy, such as the open town meeting or representative town meeting . Larger towns in New England may be incorporated as cities, with some form of mayor-council government. In New Jersey, multiple types exist, as well, such as city , township , town , borough , or village , but these differences are in the structure of the legislative branches, not in the powers or functions of

1728-415: A handful of inhabitants. Communes typically are based on pre-existing villages and facilitate local governance. All communes have names, but not all named geographic areas or groups of people residing together are communes ( "lieu dit" or "bourg" ), the difference residing in the lack of administrative powers. Except for the municipal arrondissements of its largest cities, the communes are

1836-466: A legal requirement) to later annexation of those areas. This is especially useful in rural counties that have no zoning at all, or only spot zoning for unincorporated communities. In California, all counties except the City and County of San Francisco have unincorporated areas. Even in highly populated counties, the unincorporated portions may contain a large number of inhabitants. In Los Angeles County ,

1944-769: A massive merger of communes, including by such distinguished voices as the president of the Cour des Comptes (the central auditing administrative body in France). In 1971 the Marcellin law offered support and money from the government to entice the communes to merge freely with each other, but the law had only a limited effect (only about 1,300 communes agreed to merge with others). Many rural communes with few residents struggle to maintain and manage basic services such as running water, garbage collection, or properly paved communal roads. Mergers, however, are not easy to achieve. One problem

2052-655: A median area above 15 km (5.8 sq mi). Switzerland and the Länder of Rhineland-Palatinate and Schleswig-Holstein in Germany were the only places in Europe where the communes had a smaller median area than in France. The communes of France's overseas départements such as Réunion and French Guiana are large by French standards. They usually group into the same commune several villages or towns, often with sizeable distances among them. In Réunion, demographic expansion and sprawling urbanization have resulted in

2160-455: A part of an incorporated place, changes to another incorporated place, or disincorporates. For example, places in Kingwood, Texas , previously unincorporated, retained "Kingwood, TX" mailing addresses after the 1996 annexation of Kingwood into the city of Houston . The Houston city government stated on its website, "The U.S. Postal Service establishes ZIP codes and mailing addresses to maximize

2268-524: A place name is "acceptable" in a mailing address or not, as is the case with Lithia Springs, Georgia . ZIP Code boundaries often ignore political boundaries, so the appearance of a place name in a mailing address alone does not indicate whether the place is incorporated or unincorporated. Unincorporated areas with permanent populations in the United States are defined by the United States Geological Survey as "populated places",

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2376-478: A population between 100 and 1,000 residents may have the status of designated place in Canadian census data. In some provinces, large tracts of undeveloped wilderness or rural country are unorganized areas that fall directly under the provincial jurisdiction. Some unincorporated settlements in such unorganized areas may have some types of municipal services provided to them by a quasigovernmental agency such as

2484-554: A population nine times larger and a land area four times larger than Alsace, is divided into just 390 municipalities ( gemeenten ). Most of the communes in Alsace, along with those in other regions of France, have rejected the central government's calls for mergers and rationalization. By way of contrast, in the German states bordering Alsace, the geo-political and administrative areas have been subject to various re-organizations from

2592-422: Is a small group of islands that forms the easternmost part of Denmark. This small archipelago lies 20 kilometers northeast of Bornholm and is the only part of metropolitan Denmark which is not part of a municipality. The islands have been under military jurisdiction since 1685 when Denmark turned Christiansø into a naval base to in response to Sweden creating Karlskrona naval base a few years earlier. In 1926,

2700-511: Is one of the most populated places in Georgia but is served by a branch of the Atlanta post office. Only after the city was incorporated in 2005 was "Sandy Springs" approved for use in mailing addresses, though "Atlanta" remains the default name. Accordingly, "Atlanta" is the only accepted place name for mailing addresses in the nearby unincorporated town of Vinings , also served by a branch of

2808-588: Is subdivided into 393 municipalities which are further classified, normally by population, as city , local council , or regional council . All three types of municipality provide services including zoning and planning. However, a few unincorporated areas exist, whether because of omissions and ambiguities left in official maps dating from the British Mandate for Palestine , or due to deliberate policy of ensuring facilities of national importance, such as Ben Gurion Airport , Mikveh Israel boarding school, or

2916-402: Is that mergers reduce the number of available elected positions, and thus are not popular with local politicians. Moreover, citizens from one village may be unwilling to have their local services run by an executive located in another village, whom they may consider unaware of or inattentive to their local needs. In December 2010 the law n° 2010-1563 regarding reform of territorial collectivities

3024-546: Is the Longyearbyen Community Council in Svalbard, which since 2004 in reality acts partly like a Norwegian municipality. Svalbard has a governor appointed by the government of Norway, ruling the area. Jan Mayen has no population, only radio and weather stations with staff, whose manager has the responsibility for the activities. Bouvet Island has only occasional visitors. In local government in

3132-541: The BAZAN Group oil refineries, would not have their operation affected by local considerations. The largest unincorporated area in Israel is the so-called "Reservation area", a triangular region whose vertexes are Beersheba , Dimona and Arad , in which all Negev Bedouins were concentrated in the 1950s. As no municipal services are provided within unincorporated areas, this effectively makes all Bedouin settlements in

3240-552: The Code général des collectivités territoriales (CGCT) which replaced the Code des communes (except for personnel matters) with the passage of the law of 21 February 1996 for legislation and decree number 2000-318 of 7 April 2000 for regulations. From 1794 to 1977 — except for a few months in 1848 and 1870-1871 — Paris had no mayor and was thus directly controlled by the departmental prefect. This meant that Paris had less autonomy than certain towns or villages. Even after Paris regained

3348-599: The Ministry of Defence . Note: The Brdy Military Area was abandoned by the Army in 2015 and converted into a protected landscape area , with its area being incorporated either into existing municipalities or into newly established municipalities based on the existing settlements. The other four military training areas were reduced in size in 2015 too. The decisions on whether the settlements joined existing municipalities or formed new ones were made by plebiscites. Ertholmene ,

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3456-565: The National Assembly ( Assemblée Nationale ) passed a law creating the commune, designed to be the lowest level of administrative division in France, thus endorsing these independently created communes, but also creating communes of its own. In this area as in many others, the work of the National Assembly was, properly speaking, revolutionary: not content with transforming all the chartered cities and towns into communes,

3564-756: The Openbaar Lichaam Zuidelijke IJsselmeerpolders (Southern IJsselmeerpolders Public Body). In 1984, the Landdrost became the first mayor of the new city Almere. Since that date, the Netherlands does not have any unincorporated land areas. The Openbaar Lichaam remained, however, only governing the water body of the Markermeer . After the municipal division of the Wadden Sea (1985), the territorial waters in

3672-482: The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts of 1539 by Francis I , the priest in charge of the parish was also required to record baptisms, marriages, and burials. Except for these tasks, villages were left to handle other issues as they pleased. Typically, villagers would gather to decide over a special issue regarding the community, such as agricultural land usage, but there existed no permanent municipal body. In many places,

3780-749: The United States , with a territory fourteen times larger than that of the French Republic, and nearly five times its population, had 35,937 incorporated municipalities and townships at the 2002 Census of Governments, fewer than that of the French Republic. The number of barangays in the Philippines, villages of Indonesia, and muban in Thailand also have a higher number than the French communes. There have long been calls in France for

3888-665: The United States Postal Service (USPS) (indeed, some have their own post offices), and the Census Bureau uses the names of some widely recognized unincorporated communities for its CDPs for which it tabulates census data. In some instances, unincorporated areas have a mailing address indicating the name of an incorporated city, as well as those where residents of one incorporated city have mailing addresses indicating another incorporated city. Mailing addresses do not necessarily change whether an area becomes

3996-444: The mairies . These abrupt changes profoundly alienated devout Catholics, and France soon was plunged into the throes of civil war , with the fervently religious regions of western France at its center. It would take Napoleon I to re-establish peace in France, stabilize the new administrative system, and make it generally accepted by the population. Napoleon also abolished the election of the municipal councils, which now were chosen by

4104-650: The northeastern states . All of the land in New Jersey , Connecticut , Massachusetts , New York , and Rhode Island , and nearly all of the land in New Hampshire , Pennsylvania , and Vermont , is part of an incorporated area of some type. In these areas, types (and official names) of local government entities can vary. In New England (which includes five of those eight states, plus the less fully incorporated state of Maine ), local municipalities are known as towns or cities, and most towns are administered by

4212-499: The overseas departments , and 83 in the overseas collectivities and New Caledonia . This is a considerably higher total than that of any other European country , because French communes still largely reflect the division of France into villages or parishes at the time of the French Revolution . (1) Within the current limits of metropolitan France, which existed between 1860 and 1871 and from 1919 to today. (2) Within

4320-716: The prefect , the local representative of the central government. Today, French communes are still very much the same in their general principles as those that were established at the beginning of the Revolution. The biggest changes occurred in 1831, when the French Parliament re-established the principle of the election of municipal councils, and in 1837 when French communes were given legal "personality", being now considered legal entities with legal capacity. The Jacobin revolutionaries were afraid of independent local powers, which they saw as conservative and opposed to

4428-588: The 1960s onward. In the state of Baden-Württemberg , the number of Gemeinden or communities was reduced from 3,378 in 1968 to 1,108 in September 2007. In comparison, the number of communes in Alsace was only reduced from 946 in 1971 (just before the Marcellin law aimed at encouraging French communes to merge with each other was passed, see Current debate section below) to 904 in January 2007. Consequently,

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4536-408: The Alsace region—despite having a land area only one-fifth the size and a total population only one-sixth of that of its neighbor Baden-Württemberg—has almost as many municipalities. The small Alsace region has more than double the number of municipalities compared to the large and populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia (396 Gemeinden in September 2007). Despite differences in population, each of

4644-682: The Atlanta post office, even though Vinings is in Cobb County and Atlanta is in Fulton and DeKalb counties. In contrast, neighboring Mableton has not been incorporated in nearly a century, but has its own post office and thus "Mableton" is the only acceptable place name for mailing addresses in the town. The areas of Dulah and Faria , California, which are unincorporated areas in Ventura County between Ventura and Carpinteria , have

4752-524: The French population live in 57 percent of its communes, whilst 92 percent are concentrated in the remaining 43 percent. Alsace , with an area of 8,280 km (3,200 sq mi), and now part of the Région Grand Est, used to be the smallest of the regions of metropolitan France , and still has no fewer than 904 communes. This high number is typical of metropolitan France but is atypical when compared with other European countries. It shows

4860-565: The National Assembly also decided to turn all the village parishes into full-status communes. The Revolutionaries were inspired by Cartesian ideas as well as by the philosophy of the Enlightenment . They wanted to do away with all the peculiarities of the past and establish a perfect society, in which all and everything should be equal and set up according to reason, rather than by tradition or conservatism. Thus, they set out to establish administrative divisions that would be uniform across

4968-578: The North Sea (1991) and the IJsselmeer (1994), all water bodies are now also part of a municipality and no unincorporated areas exist in the Netherlands anymore. The Openbaar Lichaam Zuidelijke IJsselmeerpolders was dissolved in 1996. The New Zealand outlying islands are offshore island groups that are part of New Zealand. The Chatham Islands is the only island group among these that are populated and it has its own territorial authority . Most of

5076-716: The PLM Law of 1982, three French communes also have a special status in that they are further divided into municipal arrondissements : these are Paris, Marseille , and Lyon . The municipal arrondissement is the only administrative unit below the commune in the French Republic but exists only in these three communes. These municipal arrondissements are not to be confused with the arrondissements that are subdivisions of French départements : French communes are considered legal entities , whereas municipal arrondissements, by contrast, have no official capacity and no budget of their own. The rights and obligations of communes are governed by

5184-482: The U.S. Census Bureau where portions of counties are not included in any legally established minor civil division (MCD) or independent incorporated place. These occur in 10 MCD states: Arkansas , Indiana , Iowa , Louisiana , Maine , Minnesota , North Carolina , North Dakota , Ohio , and South Dakota . The census recognizes such separate pieces of territory as one or more separate county subdivisions for statistical purposes. It assigns each unorganized territory

5292-496: The United States , an unincorporated area generally refers to the part of a county that is outside any municipality. An unincorporated community is one general term for a geographic area having a common social identity without municipal organization or official political designation (i.e., incorporation as a city or town). The two main types of unincorporated communities are: Most states have granted some form of home rule , so that county commissions (or boards or councils) have

5400-657: The United States and Canada, Gemeinden in Germany, comuni in Italy, or municipios in Spain. The UK equivalent are civil parishes . Communes are based on historical geographic communities or villages and are vested with significant powers to manage the populations and land of the geographic area covered. The communes are the fourth-level administrative divisions of France. Communes vary widely in size and area, from large sprawling cities with millions of inhabitants like Paris , to small hamlets with only

5508-558: The United States and Canada. In Argentina, the provinces of Chubut , Córdoba , Entre Ríos , Formosa , Neuquén , Río Negro , San Luis , Santa Cruz , Santiago del Estero , Tierra del Fuego , and Tucumán have areas that are outside any municipality or commune. Unlike many other countries, Australia has only one level of local government immediately beneath state and territorial governments. A local government area (LGA) often contains several towns and even entire metropolitan areas. Thus, aside from very sparsely populated areas and

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5616-574: The United States by Congress. Currently, the five major unincorporated U.S. insular areas are American Samoa , Guam , the Northern Mariana Islands , Puerto Rico , and the U.S. Virgin Islands . Unincorporated insular areas can be ceded to another nation or be granted independence. The U.S. has one incorporated insular area, Palmyra Atoll . Incorporation is regarded as perpetual by the U.S. federal government; once incorporated,

5724-654: The ZIP Code of 93001, which is assigned to the post office at 675 E. Santa Clara St. in Ventura; thus, all mail to those two areas is addressed to Ventura. If an unincorporated area becomes incorporated, it may be split among ZIP Codes, and its new name may be recognized as acceptable for use with some or all of them in mailing addresses, as has been the case in Johns Creek and Milton, Georgia . If an incorporated area disincorporates, though, this has no effect on whether

5832-634: The administrative splitting of some communes . The median population of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was 380 inhabitants. Again this is a very small number, and here France stands absolutely apart in Europe, with the lowest communes' median population of all the European countries (communes in Switzerland or Rhineland-Palatinate may cover a smaller area, as mentioned above, but they are more populated). This small median population of French communes can be compared with Italy, where

5940-535: The area unrecognized , with the sole exception of those that were included from 2003 within the Abu Basma Regional Council . On 5 November 2012 that council was split into two new councils, Neve Midbar Regional Council and al-Kasom Regional Council . The Netherlands has had regular periods with unincorporated land when newly reclaimed land polders fall dry. Unincorporated land is since medieval times administered by an appointed officer with

6048-452: The benefit of poorer suburbs. Moreover, intercommunal structures in many urban areas are still new, and fragile: Tensions exist between communes; the city at the center of the urban area often is suspected of wishing to dominate the suburban communes; communes from opposing political sides also may be suspicious of each other. Two famous examples of this are Toulouse and Paris. In Toulouse, on top of there being six intercommunal structures,

6156-410: The chartered cities) suddenly became legal entities for the first time in their history. This is still the case today. During the revolution, approximately 41,000 communes were created, on territory corresponding to the limits of modern-day France (the 41,000 figure includes the communes of the departments of Savoie , Haute-Savoie and Alpes-Maritimes which were annexed in 1795, but does not include

6264-535: The city of Toulouse chartered by the counts of Toulouse). These cities were made up of several parishes (up to c. 50 parishes in the case of Paris), and they were usually enclosed by a defensive wall . They had been emancipated from the power of feudal lords in the 12th and 13th centuries, had municipal bodies which administered the city, and bore some resemblance with the communes that the French Revolution would establish except for two key points: In

6372-566: The city. The California Government Code allows cities to call themselves towns, if they wish, although the designation is purely cosmetic. In the context of the insular areas of the United States, the word "unincorporated" refers to territories in which the United States Congress has determined that only selected parts of the Constitution of the United States apply and which have not been formally incorporated into

6480-420: The communes of the French Republic possesses a mayor ( maire ) and a municipal council ( conseil municipal ), which jointly manage the commune from the municipal hall ( mairie ), with exactly the same powers no matter the size of the commune. This uniformity of status is a legacy of the French Revolution, which wanted to do away with the local idiosyncrasies and tremendous differences in status that existed in

6588-694: The council of Municipal District or Specialized Municipality within their boundaries, or by the Minister of Municipal Affairs within the boundaries of an Improvement District. For example, were they incorporated, the urban service areas of Fort McMurray in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo and Sherwood Park in Strathcona County would be the fifth- and sixth-largest cities in Alberta. Unincorporated settlements with

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6696-544: The country: the whole of France would be divided into départements , themselves divided into arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons, themselves divided into communes, no exceptions. All of these communes would have equal status, they would all have a mayor at their head and a municipal council elected by the inhabitants of the commune. This was a real revolution for the thousands of villages that never had experienced organized municipal life before. A communal house had to be built in each of these villages, which would house

6804-495: The county government estimates the population of its unincorporated areas to exceed one million people. Despite having 88 incorporated cities and towns, including the state's most populous, 65% of the land in Los Angeles County is unincorporated, this mostly consisting of Angeles National Forest and sparsely populated regions to its north. In California, the state constitution recognizes only one kind of municipality,

6912-609: The county level. In mid-Atlantic states such as New York and Pennsylvania, a hybrid model that tries to balance the two approaches is prevalent, with differing allocations of power between municipalities and counties existing. Throughout the U.S., some large cities have annexed all surrounding unincorporated areas within their counties, creating what are known as consolidated city–county forms of government (e.g., Jacksonville, Florida , and Nashville, Tennessee ). In these cases, unincorporated areas continue to exist in other counties of their respective metropolitan areas. Conversely,

7020-464: The current extent of overseas France, which has remained unchanged since the independence of the New Hebrides in 1980. The whole territory of the French Republic is divided into communes; even uninhabited mountains or rain forests are dependent on a commune for their administration. This is unlike some other countries, such as the United States, where unincorporated areas directly governed by

7128-464: The departments of modern-day Belgium and Germany west of the Rhine , which were part of France between 1795 and 1815). This was fewer than the 60,000 parishes that existed before the revolution (in cities and towns, parishes were merged into one single commune; in the countryside, some very small parishes were merged with bigger ones), but 41,000 was still a considerable number, without any comparison in

7236-492: The distinctive nature of the French commune as a geo-political or administrative entity. With its 904 communes, Alsace has three times as many municipalities as Sweden , which has a much larger territory covering 449,964 km (173,732 sq mi) and yet is divided into only 290 municipalities ( kommuner ). Alsace has more than double the total number of municipalities of the Netherlands which, in spite of having

7344-428: The efficiency of their system, not to recognize jurisdictional boundaries." The USPS is very conservative about recognizing new place names for use in mailing addresses and typically only does so when a place incorporates. The original place name associated with a ZIP Code is still maintained as the default place name, even though the name of the newly incorporated place is more accurate. As an example, Sandy Springs

7452-543: The end of the afternoon, following the storming of the Bastille , the provost of the merchants of Paris, Jacques de Flesselles was shot by the crowd on the steps of Paris City Hall. Although in the Middle Ages the provosts of the merchants symbolized the independence of Paris and even had openly rebelled against King Charles V , their office had been suppressed by the king, then reinstated but with strict control from

7560-565: The entire area was declared protected cultural heritage. Population of less than 100. Statistics Denmark groups it with Bornholm in Landsdel Bornholm . Since Germany has no administrative level comparable to the townships of other countries, the vast majority of the country, close to 99%, is organized in municipalities ( German : Gemeinde , plural Gemeinden ), often consisting of multiple settlements that are not considered to be unincorporated. Because these settlements lack

7668-486: The entities themselves. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Virginia "strong county" model. Virginia and other states with this model, such as Alabama , Maryland , and Tennessee , set strict requirements on incorporation or grant counties broad powers that in other states are carried out by cities, creating a disincentive to incorporate, and thus have large urbanized areas which have no municipal government below

7776-408: The first years, the soil is equivalent to quicksand . During the initial period of inhabitation, a special, government-appointed officer was installed, the landdrost . During the administrative office of a Landdrost , no municipal council forms. In 1975, the first homes in what is now the city of Almere were built, and from 1976 to 1984, the area was governed by the Landdrost as the executive of

7884-558: The form of a law on 22 March 1890, which provided for the establishment of single-purpose intercommunal associations. French lawmakers having long been aware of the inadequacy of the communal structure inherited from the French Revolution for dealing with a number of practical matters, the so-called Chevènement law of 12 July 1999 is the most recent and most thoroughgoing measure aimed at strengthening and simplifying this principle. In recent years it has become increasingly common for communes to band together in intercommunal consortia for

7992-548: The king, and so they had ended up being viewed by the people as yet another representative of the king, no longer the embodiment of a free municipality. Following that event, a "commune" of Paris was immediately set up to replace the old medieval chartered city of Paris, and a municipal guard was established to protect Paris against any attempt made by King Louis XVI to quell the ongoing revolution. Several other cities of France quickly followed suit, and communes arose everywhere, each with their municipal guard. On 14 December 1789,

8100-421: The kingdom of France. French law makes allowances for the vast differences in commune size in a number of areas of administrative law. The size of the municipal council, the method of electing the municipal council, the maximum allowable pay of the mayor and deputy mayors, and municipal campaign finance limits (among other features) all depend on the population echelon into which a particular commune falls. Since

8208-437: The kingdom. A parish was essentially a church, the houses around it (known as the village), and the cultivated land around the village. France was the most populous country in Europe at this time, with a population of approximately 25 million inhabitants in the late 18th century ( England in contrast had only 6 million inhabitants), which accounts for the large number of parishes. French kings often prided themselves on ruling over

8316-521: The largest amount of land under that status: 39,785 square miles (103,042 km ), or 52.4% of the state's land area. North Dakota followed with 86 territories, 20,358 square miles (52,728 km ), or 29.5% of its land area. Maine was next with 36 territories, 14,052 square miles (36,396 km ), or 45.5% of its land area. Minnesota had 71 territories, 10,552 square miles (27,330 km ), or 13% of its land area. Several other states had small amounts of unorganized territory. The unorganized territory with

8424-445: The largest population was Camp Lejeune, North Carolina , a United States Marine Corps base with a census population of 34,452 inhabitants. In the 2010 census , unorganized territory areas were identified in nine U.S. states: Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Many unincorporated communities are also recognized as acceptable place names for use in mailing addresses by

8532-427: The largest unincorporated areas in Germany (including all inhabited areas, but excluding lakes) with an area of more than 50 km (19 sq mi): In Bavaria, there are other contiguous unincorporated areas covering an area of more than 50 km (19 sq mi) which are however composed of several adjacent unincorporated areas, each one of which is under 50 km in area. In Israel, almost all land

8640-653: The law. In urban areas, the new intercommunal structures are much more a reality, being created by local decision-makers out of genuine belief in the worth of working together. However, in many places, local feuds have arisen, and it was not possible to set up an intercommunal structure for the whole of the urban area: some communes refusing to take part in it, or even creating their own structure. In some urban areas like Marseille there exist four distinct intercommunal structures! In many areas, rich communes have joined with other rich communes and have refused to let in poorer communes, for fear that their citizens would be overtaxed to

8748-552: The least money per inhabitant, whereas urban communities are given the most money per inhabitant, thus pushing communes to form more integrated communities where they have fewer powers, which they might otherwise have been loath to do if it were not for government money. The Chevènement law has been extremely successful in the sense that a majority of French communes now have joined the new intercommunal structures. On 1 January 2007, there were 2,573 such communities in metropolitan France (including five syndicats d'agglomération nouvelle ,

8856-797: The like. As of 31 December 2007 , Germany had 248 uninhabited unincorporated areas (of which 214 are located in Bavaria ), not belonging to any municipality, consisting mostly of forested areas, lakes, and larger rivers. Also, three inhabited unincorporated areas exist, all of which served as military training areas : Osterheide and Lohheide in Lower Saxony, and Gutsbezirk Münsingen in Baden-Württemberg . They have fewer than 2,000 inhabitants in total. Gutsbezirk Münsingen has become uninhabited after losing its inhabited parts to adjacent municipalities on 1 January 2011. The following shows

8964-414: The local feudal lord ( seigneur ) still had a major influence in the village's affairs, collecting taxes from tenant-villagers and ordering them to work the corvée , controlling which fields were to be used and when, and how much of the harvest should be given to him. Additionally, some cities had obtained charters during the Middle Ages, either from the king himself or from local counts or dukes (such as

9072-546: The lowest level of administrative division in France and are governed by elected officials including a mayor ( maire ) and a municipal council ( conseil municipal ). They have extensive autonomous powers to implement national policy. A commune is the smallest and oldest administrative division in France . " Commune " in English has a historical association with socialist and collectivist political movements and philosophies. This association arises in part from

9180-480: The main community of Toulouse and its suburbs is only a community of agglomeration, although Toulouse is large enough to create an Urban Community according to the law. This is because the suburban communes refused an urban community for fear of losing too much power, and opted for a community of agglomeration, despite the fact that a community of agglomeration receives less government funds than an urban community. As for Paris, no intercommunal structure has emerged there,

9288-486: The mayors. Civil marriages were established and started to be performed in the mairie with a ceremony not unlike the traditional one, with the mayor replacing the priest, and the name of the law replacing the name of God (" Au nom de la loi, je vous déclare unis par les liens du mariage. " – "In the name of the law, I declare you united by the bonds of marriage."). Priests were forced to surrender their centuries-old baptism, marriage, and burial books, which were deposited in

9396-429: The median population of communes in 2001 was 2,343 inhabitants, Belgium (11,265 inhabitants), or even Spain (564 inhabitants). The median population given here should not hide the fact that there are pronounced differences in size between French communes. As mentioned in the introduction, a commune can be a city of 2 million inhabitants such as Paris, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, or just a hamlet of 10 inhabitants. What

9504-427: The median population tells us is that the vast majority of the French communes only have a few hundred inhabitants, but there are also a small number of communes with much higher populations. In metropolitan France 57 percent of the 36,683 communes have fewer than 500 inhabitants and, with 4,638,000 inhabitants, these smaller communes constitute just 7.7 percent of the total population. In other words, just 8 percent of

9612-425: The meetings of the municipal council as well as the administration of the commune. Some in the National Assembly were opposed to such a fragmentation of France into thousands of communes, but eventually Mirabeau and his ideas of one commune for each parish prevailed. On 20 September 1792, the recording of births, marriages, and deaths also was withdrawn as a responsibility of the priests of the parishes and handed to

9720-458: The name Landdrost or Drossaart . Also, Elten and Tudderen , both annexed from Germany after World War II , were governed by a Landdrost until they were ceded back to Germany in 1963. The most recent period with unincorporated land started in 1967, when the dyke around Southern Flevoland was closed, but several years are required before the polder is genuinely accessible for cultivation, and construction of roads and homes can start, as in

9828-521: The north, cities tended to be administered by échevins (from an old Germanic word meaning judge), while in the south, cities tended to be administered by consuls (in a clear reference to Roman antiquity), but Bordeaux was administered by jurats (etymologically meaning "sworn men") and Toulouse by capitouls ("men of the chapter"). Usually, there was no mayor in the modern sense; all the échevins or consuls were on equal footing, and rendered decisions collegially. However, for certain purposes, there

9936-523: The number of communes in the process – the Gemeinden of West Germany were decreased from 24,400 to 8,400 in the space of a few years – France only carried out mergers at the margin, and those were mostly carried out during the 19th century. From 41,000 communes at the time of the French Revolution, the number decreased to 37,963 in 1921, to 36,569 in 2008 (in metropolitan France). Thus, in Europe, only Switzerland has as high

10044-631: The only partially successful statute enacted in 1966 and enabling urban communes to form urban communities or the more marked failure of the Marcellin law of 1971, the Chevènement law met with a large measure of success, so that a majority of French communes are now involved in intercommunal structures. There are two types of these structures: In exchange for the creation of a community, the government allocates money to them based on their population, thus providing an incentive for communes to team up and form communities. Communities of communes are given

10152-400: The other island groups are not part of any administrative region or district , but are instead each designated as an Area Outside Territorial Authority . In Norway, the outlying islands of Bouvet Island , Jan Mayen , and Svalbard are outside of all of the country's counties and municipalities . They are ruled directly by national authorities without any local democracy. An exception

10260-403: The place of the former communes, which are represented by a delegated mayor and a delegated council. Between 2012 and 2021, about 820 communes nouvelles have been established, replacing about 2,550 old communes. The expression "intercommunality" ( intercommunalité ) denotes several forms of cooperation between communes. Such cooperation first made its appearance at the end of the 19th century in

10368-454: The province, an unincorporated settlement is one that does not have a municipal council that governs solely over the settlement. It is usually, but not always, part of a larger municipal government. These range from small hamlets to large urbanized areas similar in size to a town or city. In Alberta , unincorporated communities can be classified as Hamlet, Locality or townsite. A Hamlet is an unincorporated community that can be designated by

10476-495: The provision of such services as refuse collection and water supply. Suburban communes often team up with the city at the core of their urban area to form a community charged with managing public transport or even administering the collection of local taxes. The Chevènement law tidied up all these practices, abolishing some structures and creating new ones. In addition, it offered central government finance aimed at encouraging further communes to join in intercommunal structures. Unlike

10584-489: The revolution, and so they favored a powerful central state. Therefore, when they created the communes, they deprived them of any legal "personality" (as they did with the départements ), with only the central state having legal "personality." By 1837 that situation was judged impractical, as mayors and municipal councils could not be parties in courts. The consequence of the change, however, was that tens of thousands of villages which had never had legal "personality" (contrary to

10692-469: The right to elect its own mayor in 1977, the central government retained control of the Paris police. In all other French communes, the municipal police are under the mayor's supervision. French communes were created at the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789–1790. Before the revolution, France's lowest level of administrative division was the parish ( paroisse ), and there were up to 60,000 of them in

10800-727: The rising of the Paris Commune (1871) which could have more felicitously been called, in English, "the rising of the City of Paris". There is nothing intrinsically different between "town" in English and commune in French. The French word commune appeared in the 12th century, from Medieval Latin communia , for a large gathering of people sharing a common life; from Latin communis , 'things held in common'. As of January 2021, there were 35,083 communes in France , of which 34,836 were in metropolitan France , 129 in

10908-406: The same as those designed at the time of the French Revolution more than 200 years ago, with the same limits. Countless rural communes that had hundreds of inhabitants at the time of the French Revolution now have only a hundred inhabitants or fewer. On the other hand, cities and towns have grown so much that their urbanized area is now extending far beyond the limits of their commune which were set at

11016-484: The same powers in these areas as city councils or town councils have in their respective incorporated areas. Some states instead put these powers in the hands of townships, which are minor civil divisions of each county and are called "towns" in some states. Differences in state laws regarding the incorporation of communities leads to a great variation in the distribution and nature of unincorporated areas. Unincorporated regions are essentially nonexistent in eight of

11124-404: The suburbs of Paris fearing the concept of a "Greater Paris", and so disunity still is the rule in the metropolitan area, with the suburbs of Paris creating many different intercommunal structures all without the city. Unincorporated area An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation . There are many unincorporated communities and areas in

11232-564: The territory cannot be disincorporated . The United States Minor Outlying Islands without a permanent civilian population are "unorganized" in the sense that they do not have a local government, and they are administered by the Office of Insular Affairs directly. The populated American Samoa is "unorganized" in the sense that Congress has not passed an organic act , but it does have a constitution and locally elected territorial legislature and executive. An unincorporated community may be part of

11340-609: The time of the revolution. The most extreme example of this is Paris, where the urbanized area sprawls over 396 communes. Paris in fact was one of the very few communes of France whose limits were extended to take into account the expansion of the urbanized area. The new, larger, commune of Paris was set up under the oversight of Emperor Napoléon III in 1859, but after 1859 the limits of Paris rigidified. Unlike most other European countries, which stringently merged their communes to better reflect modern-day densities of population (such as Germany and Italy around 1970), dramatically decreasing

11448-580: The world at the time, except in the empire of China (but there, only county level and above had any permanent administration). Since then, tremendous changes have affected France, as they have the rest of Europe: the Industrial Revolution , two world wars , and the rural exodus have all depopulated the countryside and increased the size of cities. French administrative divisions, however, have remained extremely rigid and unchanged. Today about 90 percent of communes and departments are exactly

11556-428: Was adopted, which created the legal framework for the communes nouvelles (lit. "new communes"). A commune nouvelle can be created by merger of a number of communes at the request of the municipal councils of all the communes or at the initiative of the state representative in the department (the prefect ). The municipal council of the new commune can decide to create communes déléguées (lit. "delegated communes") in

11664-1053: Was one échevin or consul ranking above the others, a sort of mayor, although not with the same authority and executive powers as a modern mayor. This "mayor" was called provost of the merchants ( prévôt des marchands ) in Paris and Lyon; maire in Marseille, Bordeaux, Rouen , Orléans , Bayonne and many other cities and towns; mayeur in Lille ; premier capitoul in Toulouse; viguier in Montpellier ; premier consul in many towns of southern France; prêteur royal in Strasbourg ; maître échevin in Metz ; maire royal in Nancy ; or prévôt in Valenciennes . On 14 July 1789, at

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