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The following sortable table lists the 3,242 counties and county equivalents of the United States and their respective FIPS codes.
A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US state of Vermont and in some other English-speaking jurisdictions. County towns have a similar function in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, as well as historically in Jamaica.
FIPS state codes were numeric and two-letter alphabetic codes defined in U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard Publication 5-2 to identify U.S. states and certain other associated areas. The standard superseded FIPS PUB 5-1 on May 28, 1987, and was superseded on September 2, 2008, by ANSI standard INCITS 38:2009.
In the United States, a county or county equivalent is an administrative or political subdivision of a state which consists of a geographic region with specific boundaries and usually some level of governmental authority. The term "county" is used in 48 states, while Louisiana and Alaska have functionally equivalent subdivisions called parishes and boroughs, respectively. The specific governmental powers of counties vary widely between the states, with many providing some level of services to civil townships, municipalities, and unincorporated areas. Certain municipalities are in multiple counties; New York City is uniquely partitioned into five counties, referred to at the city government level as boroughs. Some municipalities have consolidated with their county government to form consolidated city-counties, or have been legally separated from counties altogether to form independent cities. Conversely, those counties in Connecticut, Rhode Island, eight of Massachusetts's 14 counties, and Alaska's Unorganized Borough have no government power, existing only as geographic distinctions.
Broomfield is a consolidated city and county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. Broomfield has a consolidated government which operates under Article XX, Sections 10–13 of the Constitution of the State of Colorado. The Broomfield population was 74,112 at the 2020 United States Census, making it the 15th most populous municipality and the 12th most populous county in Colorado. Broomfield is a part of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Front Range Urban Corridor.
In United States local government, a consolidated city-county is formed when one or more cities and their surrounding county merge into one unified jurisdiction. As such it has the governmental powers of both a municipal corporation and an administrative division of a state.
A minor civil division (MCD) is a term used by the United States Census Bureau for primary governmental and/or administrative divisions of a county or county-equivalent, typically a municipal government such as a city, town, or civil township. MCDs are used for statistical purposes by the Census Bureau, and do not necessarily represent the primary form of local government. They range from non-governing geographical survey areas to municipalities with weak or strong powers of self-government. Some states with large unincorporated areas give substantial powers to counties; others have smaller or larger incorporated entities with governmental powers that are smaller than the MCD level chosen by the Census.
In 45 of the 50 states of the United States, the county is used for the level of local government immediately below the state itself. Louisiana uses parishes, and Alaska uses boroughs. In Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, some or all counties within states have no governments of their own; the counties continue to exist as legal entities, however, and are used by states for some administrative functions and by the United States Census bureau for statistical analysis. There are 3,242 counties and county equivalent administrative units in total, including the District of Columbia and 100 county-equivalents in the U.S. territories.
Most U.S. states and territories have at least two tiers of local government: counties and municipalities. Louisiana uses the term parish and Alaska uses the term borough for what the U.S. Census Bureau terms county equivalents in those states. Civil townships or towns are used as subdivisions of a county in 20 states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest.
The Unorganized Borough is composed of the portions of the U.S. state of Alaska which are not contained in any of its 19 organized boroughs. While referred to as the "Unorganized Borough", it is not a borough itself, as it forgoes that level of government structure. It encompasses nearly half of Alaska's land area, 323,440 square miles (837,700 km2), an area larger than any other U.S. state, and larger than the land area of the smallest 16 states combined. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, it had a population of 77,157, which was 10.52% of the population of the state. The largest communities in the Unorganized Borough are the cities of Bethel, Unalaska, and Valdez.
A borough in some U.S. states is a unit of local government or other administrative division below the level of the state. The term is currently used in six states:
In the United States, an independent city is a city that is not in the territory of any county or counties and is considered a primary administrative division of its state. Independent cities are classified by the United States Census Bureau as "county equivalents" and may also have similar governmental powers to a consolidated city-county. However, in the case of a consolidated city-county, a city and a county were merged into a unified jurisdiction in which the county at least nominally exists to this day, whereas an independent city was legally separated from any county or merged with a county that simultaneously ceased to exist even in name.
This article includes information about the 100 most populous incorporated cities, the 100 most populous core-based statistical areas (CBSAs), and the 100 most populous primary statistical areas (PSAs) of the United States and Puerto Rico. This information is displayed in two tables. The first table ranks the cities, CBSAs, and PSAs separately by population. The second table displays the areas in hierarchical order by the most populous PSA, then most populous CBSA, and then most populous city.
The United States federal government defines and delineates the nation's metropolitan areas for statistical purposes, using a set of standard statistical area definitions. As of 2020, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defined and delineated 392 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and 547 micropolitan statistical areas (μSAs) in the United States and Puerto Rico. Many of these 939 MSAs and μSAs are, in turn, components of larger combined statistical areas (CSAs) consisting of adjacent MSAs and μSAs that are linked by commuting ties; as of 2020, 551 metropolitan and micropolitan areas are components of the 175 defined CSAs. A collective term for MSAs, μSAs, and CSAs is primary statistical areas (PSAs), though that term is not used by OMB.