Question for US Americans (Administrative Geography)

[Zorkaz]

When you have a town but a huge amount of land outside of the town still belongs to it how would you call it from an administrative viewpoint. Is it a county?

 

[M48A5]

When you have a town but a huge amount of land outside of the town still belongs to it how would you call it from an administrative viewpoint. Is it a county?

 

Where I live (New Jersey), it's still a city. I just happen to live in the largest city by land area in the state.

 

However, there are cities that are also counties. The first one that comes to mind is the city and county of Philadelphia. There are cities and counties with the same name and I can understand that it would be confusing for someone that is not a resident.

[anjenthedog]

Generally speaking, in the USA, we call the area including but not limited to a city "proper", "the metropolitan area"

 

This includes parcels owned by said city for water or land management, etc. outside the "normal" borders, as well as inner ring, ostensibly independent suburbs

 

I guess a term specific to the city owned parcels would be something like "city owned resources"

[Zorkaz]

Metropolitan area isn't proper in this case I think, since this goes for D.C. and NY.

It's actually about a small town that wants parts of their wilderness converted into a nature reserve (Prewar)

 

I'll go with county, thank you all

[anjenthedog]

idk, in my American understanding, a county is usually a confined area composed of contiguous "plots", and it is its own administrative entity, distinct from cities or towns or villages or city states, etc.

 

For instance, we have a series of man-made lakes nearby, originally created by a group of Shakers (religious group) in the 19th century. Since they are on main water shed that feeds into the nearby city, the city annexed them in the early 1900s (ostensibly for flood control purposes) after the Shakers died off (Shakers believed in total sexual abstinence and had no children). So they own the lakes and the narrow strips of streams that connect them, and they can tell others what they can and can't do with the lakes, but they're not "in" the city that owns them. They're in separate, independent cities that surround them. Now, in this case, they do happen to reside in the same county in which the city sits, but they're not county resources (county gov is not city gov or visa versa) nor are they marked on (most) maps as part of the larger city. They're considered geographic elements of (and parks for) the suburbs in which they reside.

 

In the US, administratively speaking, there are states, then counties, then cities, then towns, (or townships) and rarely, villages.

 

but use whatever term you want. Still, "county" would not be an accurate description, at least not in the USA.

[Moksha8088]

The administrative borders for Diamond City would extend to the furthest reaches of its guard patrols, which is not very far. The bloat fly infested house across the lake and Vault 81 would be outside its jurisdiction.