Ekistics |
---|
![]() |
![]() |
A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries.
Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Canada, Scotland and parts of the United States, the term refers to settlements too small or scattered to be considered urban.
The Australian National Dictionary defines township as: "A site reserved for and laid out as a town; such a site at an early stage of its occupation and development; a small town". [1]
The term refers purely to the settlement; it does not refer to a unit of government. Townships are governed as part of a larger council (such as that of a shire, district or city) or authority. [2]
In Canada, two kinds of township occur in common use.
In China, townships are found at the fourth level of the administrative hierarchy, below counties, districts and county level cities; above villages and communities, together with ethnic townships, towns and subdistricts.
In India, townships are found at the fourth level of the city.
In Jersey, a township is a redundant term, as the only surviving local government level at present are the 12 parishes of the island.
In Malaysia, townships are found at the third level of the administrative hierarchy, is a subdivision of a daerah (district or county) or autonomous sub-district (daerah kecil), while above kampung (village) and taman (residential neighbourhood) as per Section 11(c) of the National Land Code 1965.
In local government in New Zealand, there are no longer towns or townships. All land is part of either a "city" (mostly urban) or a "district" (mostly rural). The term "municipality" has become rare in New Zealand since about 1979 and has no legal status.
The term "township" is, however, still in common usage in New Zealand, in reference to a small town or urban community located in a rural area. The expression would generally equate to that of "village" in England. [3]
![]() | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (March 2023) |
In the Philippines, "townships" referred to administrative divisions established during the American Civil Government in the country. Many of these political divisions were originally established as rancherias during the Spanish Regime. The term was later replaced with "municipal district". [4] Most municipal districts would later be converted into regular municipalities by executive orders from the Philippine president. [5]
Currently, Mambukal, a hill station geographically located in Murcia, Negros Occidental, is the only legally constituted township in the Philippines, created under Republic Act No. 1964, approved June 22, 1957.[ citation needed ]
In modern days, the term "township" in the Philippines refers to new developments with their own amenities both Vertical and Horizontal projects. The modern and largest townships in the Philippines are New Clark City with 9,450 hectares in Capas of Tarlac, Hamilo Coast with 5,900 hectares in Nasugbu of Batangas, Nuvali with 2,290 hectares in Santa Rosa of Laguna, Lancaster New City with 2,000 hectares in Kawit Imus GenTri of Cavite, Vista City with 1,500 hectares in Las Piñas Muntinlupa of Metro Manila and Dasmariñas of Cavite, Twin Lakes with 1,149 hectares in Tagaytay of Cavite and Alviera with 1,125 hectares in Porac of Pampanga. Majority of the current townships are located near Metro Manila, allowing faster access to the capital region by road and/or rail transport.
In the context of Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and Commonwealth of Independent States states, the term is sometimes used to denote a small semi-urban, sometimes industrial, settlement and used to translate the terms поселок городского типа (townlet), посад ( posad ), местечко (mestechko, from Polish " miasteczko ", a small town; in the cases of predominant Jewish population the latter is sometimes translated as shtetl).[ citation needed ]
In South Africa, under apartheid, the term township (or location), in everyday usage, came to mean a residential development that confined non-whites (Blacks, Coloureds, and Indians) living near or working in white-only communities. Soweto ("SOuth-WEstern TOwnships") and Mdantsane are well-known examples. However, the term township also has a precise legal meaning and is used on land titles in all areas, not only traditionally non-white areas. [6]
In Taiwan, townships are administered by a county, together with county-administered city. There are three types of townships in Taiwan: urban townships, rural townships and mountain indigenous townships. Mountain indigenous townships are those with significant populations of Taiwanese aborigines.
![]() | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (March 2023) |
In England, the term township is no longer in official use, but the term still has some meaning.
In England, townships referred to subdivisions of large parishes for administrative purposes. [7] This use became obsolete at the end of the 19th century, when local government reform converted many townships that had been subdivisions of ancient parishes into the newer civil parishes in their own right. This formally separated the connection between the ecclesiastical functions of ancient parishes and the civil administrative functions that had been started in the 16th century. Recently, some councils, normally in the north of England, have revived the term.
In Scotland, the term is still used for some rural settlements. In parts of the Highlands and Islands, a township is a crofting settlement. In the Highlands generally the term may describe a very small agrarian community.
For townships in Wales, which were created by an Act of Parliament in 1539 see: Townships in Montgomeryshire.
It is a subdivision of a county and is usually 36 square miles (about 93 square kilometres) in area. [8] There are two types of townships in the United States; a state may have one or both types. In states that have both, the boundaries often coincide in many counties.
When after the Treaty of Paris, the U.S. did its first census of Puerto Rico the documents called them "barrios" as they had been called when Puerto Rico was under Spanish rule. [9] The townships or barrios as they are called in P.R. and on U.S. Census documents are subdivisions of municipalities of Puerto Rico. [10] [11]
In Vietnam, a commune-level town (thị trấn) is very similar to a township; it is a subdivision of a rural district (huyện) and is the lowest administration subdivision in the country.[ citation needed ]
In Zimbabwe, the term township was used for segregated parts of suburban areas. During colonial years in Rhodesia, the term township referred to a residential area reserved for black citizens within the boundaries of a city or town and is still commonly used colloquially. This reflected the South African usage.
In modern Zimbabwe, the term is also used to refer to a residential area within close proximity of a rural growth point. [12]
A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term borough designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely.
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 county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes in some modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French comté denoting a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count (earl) or a viscount. Literal equivalents in other languages, derived from the equivalent of "count", are now seldom used officially, including comté, contea, contado, comtat, condado, Grafschaft, graafschap, and zhupa in Slavic languages; terms equivalent to 'commune' or 'community' are now often instead used.
A town is a human settlement where people live. It refers to the totality of human community with all the social, material, organizational, spiritual, and cultural elements that sustain it. 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.
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town, with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighborhoods. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings; however, transient villages can occur. Further, the dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, not scattered broadly over the landscape, as a dispersed settlement.
A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions of municipalities, school district, or political district.
Amt is a type of administrative division governing a group of municipalities, today only in Germany, but formerly also common in other countries of Northern Europe. Its size and functions differ by country and the term is roughly equivalent to a US township or county or English shire district.
The municipalities of Puerto Rico are the second-level administrative divisions in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. There are 78 such administrative divisions covering all 78 incorporated towns and cities. Each municipality is led by a mayor and divided into barrios, third-level administrative divisions, though the latter are not vested with any political authority. Every municipality is governed as stated by the Autonomous Municipalities Act of 1991, which establishes that every municipality must have an elected strong mayor with a municipal legislature as the form of government. Each legislature must be unicameral, with the number of members related to adequate representation of the total population of the municipality. In contrast to other jurisdictions, both the mayors and the municipal legislators are elected on the same date and for the same term of four years in office.
An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world have either no unincorporated areas at all or very few of them.
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.
A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village. This is often simply an informal description of a smaller settlement or possibly a subdivision or satellite entity to a larger settlement.
The term township, in Canada, is generally the district or area associated with a town. The specific use of the term to describe political subdivisions has varied by country, usually to describe a local rural or semirural government within the country itself.
A township in some states of the United States is a small geographic area.
Barrio is a Spanish word that means "quarter" or "neighborhood". In the modern Spanish language, it is generally defined as each area of a city, usually delimited by functional, social, architectural or morphological features. In Spain, several Latin American countries and the Philippines, the term may also be used to officially denote a division of a municipality. Barrio is an arabism.
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.
In geography, statistics and archaeology, a settlement, locality or populated place is a community of people living in a particular place. The complexity of a settlement can range from a minuscule number of dwellings grouped together to the largest of cities with surrounding urbanized areas. Settlements may include hamlets, villages, towns and cities. A settlement may have known historical properties such as the date or era in which it was first settled, or first settled by particular people. The process of settlement envolves human migration
Río Piedras Pueblo, is one of 18 barrios in the municipality of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Rio Piedras Pueblo is what used to be the urban center-barrio of the former municipality of Río Piedras until 1951, when the municipality of Rio Piedras was merged with the municipality of San Juan.
Pueblo is a term primarily used in Puerto Rico to refer to the municipal district (barrio) that serves as the administrative, historic and cultural center of a municipality. The concept of pueblo is often used locally as analogous to the concept of downtown in U.S. cities. Pueblos are officially called barrio-pueblo by the United States Census since 1990.
To those unacquainted with Australian colloquialisms the word 'township' is misleading. One is reluctant to give to a little hamlet, containing barely a dozen houses, a title which would more properly apply to a town of moderate size. But, nevertheless, of that character are the majority of colonial townships.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link)page 3: In an urban area, the basic unit of land is an erf. And page 5: A general plan is registered as a "township" in the Deeds Office and in he case of Durban. Hence the trend now is to frame diagrams for townships that should really be depicted on general plans.