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Do you have some proof of the difference? I have only seen incorporated to mean cities and unincorporated to mean the parts of counties outside of cities. The s
by ianburrell 4y ago
Do you have some proof of the difference? I have only seen incorporated to mean cities and unincorporated to mean the parts of counties outside of cities. The status of the county doesn’t make any difference.
You might be seeing a difference since California doesn’t have many unincorporated suburbs like other states do. I think the reason is that it is easy for cities to annex adjacent areas, and for areas that don’t want to annexed to incorporate. The result is medium towns, especially in urban areas, end up incorporated.
- gumby 4y ago> Do you have some proof of the difference? I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. The status of a county and a city are orthogonal in this regard (I gave an example of that in fact). As far as counties go, I just gave the bigger picture (country structure) to point out that that "default" governance is, well, the default for most of the land of the state (though not the situation most people live under). The original commenter to whom I was responding didn't understand what "unincorporated land" might actually mean. And if you don't live in the west, but rather say in Massachusetts or England or Germany the idea of a piece of land that isn't under some formally organized government is rather odd, so the original commenter's question wasn't unreasonable. Outside of the densely settled counties (e.g. San Mateo, San Diego, and so on) unincorporated suburbs are pretty common as well in California.