Unincorporated area (New Jersey)

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Sign at Pine Valley, an unincorporated community in San Diego County, California, United States, northeast of San Diego.

In law, an unincorporated area is a region of land that is not a part of any municipality. To "incorporate" in this context means to form a municipal corporation, a city or town with its own government. Thus, an unincorporated community is usually not subject to or taxed by a city government. Such regions are generally administered by default as a part of larger territorial divisions, such as a township, borough, county, state, province, canton, parish, or country. It is not unknown, but uncommon, for small towns in fiscal crisis to disincorporate in order to have services provided by a higher administration.[citation needed]

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Australia

In Australia the unincorporated areas are places outside municipal council boundaries, usually in remote areas. Some are of vast area but tiny population. There are large unincorporated areas in the Northern Territory with over 9000 km of roads in those areas.[1] Most of South Australia is in the unincorporated Outback Areas Community Development Trust. The far west and north of New South Wales is called the Unincorporated Far West Region, which is sparsely populated and barely warrants an elected council. However a civil servant in the state capital manages such matters as are necessary. The only other state to have unincorporated areas is Victoria, which has two small unincorporated areas in Alpine Shire, and one in Shire of Mansfield (all of which are ski resorts), as well as some small off shore islands.

Canada

In Canada, depending on the province, an unincorporated settlement is one that has no town council. It is usually, but not always, part of a larger municipal government. This can range from small hamlets to larger urbanized areas. For example, Sherwood Park, a suburb of Edmonton, would be the seventh largest city in Alberta if it were incorporated, but remains simply a part of the Specialized Municipality of Strathcona County. Likewise, the oil sands boomtown of Fort McMurray, Alberta is not a separate community but part of the massive Wood Buffalo Regional Municipality.

Unincorporated settlements with a population of between 100 and 1,000 residents may have the status of designated place in Canadian census data.

Some unincorporated settlements which are not part of a larger municipality — particularly those in very remote areas — may have some types of municipal services provided to them by a quasi-governmental agency such as a local service board.

Germany

Since Germany has no administrative level comparable to the townships of other countries, the vast majority of the country is organized in municipalities, which often consist of multiple settlements; these settlements are not considered to be unincorporated, however; even though they do lack councils of their own, there is usually an Ortsvorsteher (village president) appointed by the larger municipality, except in the very smallest villages. As of January 1, 2004, Germany had 244 uninhabited unincorporated areas (of which 215 are located in Bavaria), called gemeindefreie Gebiete or singular gemeindefreies Gebiet, not belonging to any municipality, consisting mostly of forested areas. There are also three inhabited unincorporated areas, all of which serve as military proving grounds: Osterheide and Lohheide in Lower Saxony, and Gutsbezirk Münsingen in Baden-Württemberg. They have less than 2000 inhabitants in total.

United States

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Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (February 2008)

In United States local government, an unincorporated community is one general term for a geographic area having a common social identity without benefit of municipal organization or official political designation (i.e. incorporation as a city or town). There are two main types of unincorporated communities:

  • a neighborhood or other community existing within one or across multiple existing incorporated areas (i.e. cities or towns). In this sense, a community is part of a municipal government, but not separately incorporated from it. For example, Hyannis, Massachusetts is an unincorporated village within the town limits of the larger incorporated town of Barnstable.
Nutbush, an unincorporated area in Haywood County, Tennessee, United States, is the childhood home of singer Tina Turner
  • a neighborhood or other community existing outside of an incorporated municipal government. In this sense, the community is outside of any municipal government, and entirely unincorporated. Some, like Nutbush, Tennessee are small rural settlements of low population. Others, like Springfield, Virginia are densely populated, urbanized areas that have never been incorporated despite dense populations.

Due to differences in state laws regarding the incorporation of communities, there is a great variation in the distribution and nature of unincorporated areas. Unincorporated regions are essentially non-existent in the six New England states due to the weak county government system and nearly all of the land in New England is part of an incorporated town. Some states, like Virginia, Maryland, and Michigan set strict requirements on incorporation or grant counties and townships 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 the county or township level. Other states, such as New York and New Jersey, have complex systems of incorporation with multiple types of municipalities, such as City, Township, Town, Borough or Village. Some large cities have annexed all surrounding unincorporated areas, creating what are known as consolidated city-county forms of government. Jacksonville, Florida (which merged with Duval County in 1968) is typical of this sort of arrangement. In areas of sparse population, such as the western part of the U.S., the majority of the land in any given state may be unincorporated.

In the context of the United States insular areas, the word "unincorporated" means that the territory has not been formally and irrevocably incorporated into the United States. (See: incorporated territory.) Unincorporated insular areas are therefore potentially subject to being sold or otherwise transferred to another power, or, conversely, being granted independence. However, neither fate seems likely to occur in the foreseeable future to the five remaining major unincorporated U.S. insular areas, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or the Northern Mariana Islands.

Many unincorporated communities are also recognized as places by the United States Postal Service (some communities have their own post offices, with their names used in mailing addresses) or the United States Census Bureau (which recognizes some communities as census-designated places and tabulates census data for them).

The Netherlands

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 the name Landdrost or Drossaart. Also from 1946 till 1964 the areas Elten and Tudderen, both annexed from Germany were governed by a Landdrost.

The last period with unincorporated land started in 1967 when the dyke around Southern Flevoland was closed. It however requires several years before the polder is genuinely accessible for cultivation and construction of roads and homes can start, as in the first years the soil is equivalent to quick sand. During the initial period of inhabitation a special, government appointed officer is installed, who is called Landdrost. During the administrative office of a Landdrost there is no municipal council.

In 1975 the first homes in what is now the city of Almere were built and from 1976 till 1984 the area was governed by the Landdrost as the executive of the Openbaar Lichaam Zuidelijk Flevoland. In 1984 the Landdrost became the first mayor of the new city Almere. Since that date the Netherlands does not have unincorporated area.

Countries without unincorporated places

Many countries, especially those with many centuries of history using multiple tiers of local government, do not use the concept of an unincorporated place.

In the United Kingdom the whole of the country, rural and urban, has been covered by a two or three-tier system of local government for many centuries (although many of the larger conurbations now have single tier or unitary local governments). In South Africa the latest constitution gave every place in the country democratically elected third-tier government.

Likewise the whole of the territories of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France (except for some small overseas possessions), Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Norway (though a handful of unincorporated cities exist within ordinary municipalities), Serbia, Sweden, and Switzerland are divided into communes.

Some U.S. states have no unincorporated land areas; these include New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, although these states all have communities that are not separately incorporated but are part of a larger municipality.

See also

References

  1. ^ Loraine Braham (10am. August 25, 2004). "Building Healthier Communities – Report". Full Text Transcript, Ministerial Reports, Northern Territory Legislative Assembly. Retrieved on 2007-02-08.
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