A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
An unincorporated area is a region not governed by a local municipal corporation. Similarly, an unincorporated community is a settlement not governed by its own local municipal corporation, but is administered as part of larger administrative divisions, such as a township, parish, borough, county, city, canton, state, province, or country. Occasionally, municipalities dissolve or disincorporate, which may happen if they become fiscally insolvent, and services become the responsibility of a higher administration. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world have either no unincorporated areas at all, or these are very rare; typically remote, outlying, sparsely populated, or uninhabited areas.
A hamlet is a small human settlement. In different jurisdictions and geographies, a hamlet may be the size of a town, village or parish, or may be considered to be a smaller settlement or subdivision or satellite entity to a larger settlement. The word and concept of a hamlet have roots in the Anglo-Norman settlement of England, where the old French hamlet came to apply to small human settlements. In British geography, a hamlet is considered smaller than a village and distinctly without a church or other place of worship.
Japan has three levels of government: national, prefectural, and municipal. The nation is divided into 47 prefectures. Each prefecture consists of numerous municipalities, with 1,719 in total. There are four types of municipalities in Japan: cities, towns, villages and special wards. In Japanese, this system is known as shikuchōson (市区町村), where each kanji in the word represents one of the four types of municipalities. Some designated cities also have further administrative subdivisions, also known as wards. But, unlike the Special wards of Tokyo, these wards are not municipalities.
An incorporated town is a town that is a municipal corporation.
The following is a set–index article, providing a list of lists, for the cities, towns and villages within the jurisdictional United States. It is divided, alphabetically, according to the state, territory, or district name in which they are located.
In the United States, the meaning of "village" varies by geographic area and legal jurisdiction. In many areas, "village" is a term, sometimes informal, for a type of administrative division at the local government level. Since the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government from legislating on local government, the states are free to have political subdivisions called "villages" or not to and to define the word in many ways. Typically, a village is a type of municipality, although it can also be a special district or an unincorporated area. It may or may not be recognized for governmental purposes.
The 28 provinces of Bulgaria are divided into 265 municipalities. Municipalities typically comprise multiple towns, villages and settlements and are governed by a mayor who is elected by popular majority vote for a four-year term, and a municipal council which is elected using proportional representation for a four-year term. The creation of new municipalities requires that they must be created in a territory with a population of at least 6,000 and created around a designated settlement. They must also be named after the settlement that serves as the territory's administrative center, among other criteria.
A Village Development Committee (VDC) in Nepal was the lower administrative part of its Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development. Each district had several VDCs, similar to municipalities but with greater public-government interaction and administration. There were 3,157 village development committees in Nepal. Each VDC was further divided into several wards depending on the population of the district, the average being nine wards.
Gaunpalika is an administrative division in Nepal. The Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development (Nepal) dissolved the existing village development committees and announced the establishment of this new local body. It is a sub-unit of a district. There are currently 460 rural municipalities.
