Incorporation

US place definitions baffle me.

I mean, take the above example. The latest census figures show Mackinaw City in northern Michigan has 859 year-round inhabitants. Not surprisingly, it doesn't have a cathedral either, yet it can still call itself a city.

How? Incorporation is how. And what is incorporation in these parts? Basically, it involves holding a referendum on whether you want to be a town, city, etc. (i.e. agreeing amongst yourselves) and then going cap-in-hand to the local state legislature and saying a somewhat more legal variation on "Please Mother may I?" whereupon, with a wave of the hand and some mumbled words, the legislators throw a charter your way and you're a city. Da-daa!

So that's cities sorted out. What else is there? Well, there are villages and towns and - to make it even more complicated - townships.

We, for instance, live in a township (population 65,000). Don't ask me what it means. I cannot tell you, nor explain the difference between a township and a town apart from the fact that our senior official is not a mayor but a supervisor.

This is how Wikipedia explains it (and if you understand the mumbo-jumbo, you're a better person than I am):

"A civil township is a widely-used yet loose term applied to varying entities of local government, with and without municipal status. Though all townships are generally given names and may be abbreviated "Twp.," their function differs greatly from state to state. While cities, towns, boroughs, or villages are common terms for municipalities; townships, counties, and parishes are sometimes not considered to be municipalities. In many states, counties and townships are organized and operate under the authority of state statutes. In contrast, municipal corporations are often chartered entities with a degree of home rule. However, there are some exceptions. Most notably, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, townships are a class of incorporation with fixed boundaries and equal standing to a village, town, borough or city, analogous to a New England town or towns in New York."

So far so nebulous. Want to hear more?

Villages can be several times larger than cities (the biggest village in New York state has 55,000 inhabitants) and consist of one of more townships (Mackinaw City contains two).

Meanwhile, as I've written about in the past, Novi Township contains the city of Novi, which was incorporated in 1969 by the citizens of the village of Novi, which was itself only created as recently as 1958.

Oh, and did I mention that villages can also be incorporated from townships?

So to sum things up, a village is geographically smaller than a town, township or city, but can be larger and/or contain each. A growing village can become a township - or vice versa. And any conglomeration can be a city.