Municipalities and Cities

Municipalities are local governments created by states, through charters or general laws, to serve particular communities, and they go by names such as city, town, village, and borough. The Census Bureau counts about 19,500 municipal governments, ranging from New York City, with more than eight million residents, to villages with a few dozen. About four in five Americans live in urban areas, and municipalities provide many of the services residents use daily.

City governments typically provide police and fire protection, water and sewer service, trash collection, streets, parks, libraries, building codes, and zoning that shapes land use and housing. The main forms of city government are mayor-council, in which an elected mayor serves as chief executive with a strong or weak role, council-manager, in which an elected council hires a professional manager, a model now common in mid-sized cities, and the less common commission form, first adopted in Galveston, Texas, after a 1900 hurricane. New England towns may still govern through town meetings.

Cities rely on property taxes, sales taxes, fees, and state and federal aid, and their finances can be fragile, as Detroit's bankruptcy in 2013, the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history, showed. Under Dillon's Rule or home rule, cities depend on state authority, and states increasingly preempt city ordinances on issues such as minimum wages, firearms, and policing. The National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors represent cities nationally. Supporters of strong cities say local governments are most responsive to residents, while others say fragmentation into many small municipalities complicates regional problems.