Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 June 20

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June 20

Why multiple counties municipalities exist?

Hi,
I'd seen the list of multiple municipalities in Wikipedia.
And it made me we wonder why do they exist in the first place.
Can somebody explain?
List of U.S. cities in multiple countiesExx8 (talk) 14:42, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Cities can expand, and sometimes they cross county boundaries, presumably facilitated by negotiations among various levels of government. The most obvious example is New York City, which covers five counties. And city government is usually distinct from county government, so it works. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:37, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

It depends on the state, though. In California, cities cannot straddle county lines. This is sometimes the limiting factor to cities' territorial ambitions. When I were a lad, for example, East Palo Alto was not a city, but part of unincorporated San Mateo County. If it had been within Santa Clara County, I imagine Palo Alto would have gobbled it up. (Though possibly not, as it was a depressed area at the time and I don't know for sure that they wanted it.) --Trovatore (talk) 19:42, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

State law is certainly going to figure into it. 50 states, 50 potentially different ways of dividing the state up. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:54, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Yeah. On reflection, it's a little strange, because in California, county government is pretty much irrelevant within a city. County ordinances apply only in unincorporated territory. So it's not really clear why a city shouldn't straddle county lines, given that the county pretty much doesn't effectively exist inside the city anyway. Maybe it has something to do with who gets tax revenues or something. --Trovatore (talk) 20:05, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Come to think of it, I think the California Superior Courts are broken up at the county level, and the counties also run the jails. That must be it. I suppose it would be a little awkward for the city cops to have to file charges in different courts depending on where exactly within the city they arrested someone. --Trovatore (talk) 20:24, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

There is no county government in the five boroughs. —Nelson Ricardo (talk) 19:13, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

There are likely many many reasons why this might occur. In the case of Illinois municipalities, it likely has a lot to do with the fact that there is very little in the way of county government and therefore fewer restrictions and governmental hoops to jump through to make it happen. Most governance is either at the state or town/city level.

More specifically, in the case of Hinsdale, Illinois (map), it makes more sense geographically if the town extends all the way to the I-294 on the east side of town even though the limits of DuPage county (map) do not. The town naturally "grew" out on that side to the highway. The highway makes a good divider since there are very few ways to get across it for municipal vehicles that would need to service streets on the other side. Meanwhile, the county has very little concern. If the Cook county sheriff needed to patrol in the sliver that is outside of DuPage county, they'd have to find a way around/over/under the highway. But that sliver is covered by the town of Hinsdale's police department. In the end, it's easier if the town extends past county lines.

The order in which the county lines were drawn, the highways were built, and the towns grew just made it easier for Hinsdale to be in two counties. Dismas|^(talk) 19:51, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Consider Lloydminster which is one city partly in Alberta and partly in Saskatchewan. One city (it is not a pair of 'twin' cities, in two provinces. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.232.203.148 (talk) 10:14, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

In some cases, it's because of where the county lines are drawn. Near me is Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, which was created in large part because of the burgeoning city of New Castle. This city grew up along the Beaver and Erie Canal at the point where two smaller rivers formed the Beaver River, but at the same time the border between Beaver County and Mercer County was just a few hundred feet from the confluence point (whether by design or by accident, I don't know). It was thoroughly advantageous to have a city at this location, and the county split was just an unfortunate difficulty until they gave up and mounted a successful effort to have a separate county created. (It's still odd to see County Line Street one block from the county courthouse, 40°59′53″N 80°20′22″W.) Meanwhile, looking to Trovatore's answer up above, multi-jurisdictional muddles can definitely be a problem; part of Boulder County, Colorado incorporated as Broomfield in 1961, but some years ago they became a consolidated city-county because they'd annexed into three other counties, and it was becoming profoundly awkward to deal with court systems in four different counties. Finally, comparable to the California system, consider New England. In Vermont, the law defines county boundaries by saying "This county is composed of municipalities A, B, C..."; see legal definition of Bennington County. Counties in general aren't that significant in New England, so it makes sense for counties just to be groups of municipalities. Nyttend (talk) 13:19, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

• The main difference in the U.S. is how each state decides to organize it's own administrative divisions. Ever U.S. state is sovereign in this regard: it is free to decide how to organize itself and administer its various geographic units. That gives a wide variety of ways states are "broken down". Consider that Hawaii does not have any unit of government smaller than the county (see List of counties in Hawaii), names of settlements and cities in Hawaii are for convenience and have no legal meaning. At the other end of the spectrum, states like Connecticut and Rhode Island are exactly the opposite: No geographic division larger than the town (see New England town) has any legal meaning, "counties" only exist historically, remnants of past organization. Really, in the U.S., there exists a continuum between those two extremes (Counties with no municipalities, and municipalities with no counties). In most of the U.S., the main division is the county: municipalities are only organized around settlements of reasonable population density: much of the U.S. is essentially unpopulated or lightly populated rural areas, and the sorts of services a "city" provides don't make sense where your nearest neighbor is 5 miles away in any direction. So where cities exist and are incorporated, they exist to provide the sorts of services that a settlement would need, and there's no need to designate a municipal corporation over a geographic area where there are not the number of people to support one. In most states with settlement patterns like this, cities are incorporated without regard to county lines (so you get places like Rocky Mount, North Carolina, which straddles the border of two counties). Viginia provides a unique situation, cities are legally separated from counties, and counties provide no services for incorporated cities; functionally an incorporated city is its own county, and you get situations like Arlington County, Virginia, which is essentially 100% urbanized and operates exactly like a city except in name, and the city of Suffolk, Virginia, much of which is rural and thus which operates more like a county would in most other states. In the densely populated Northeast, almost all of the land supports municipality-like population density (except places like northwestern Maine and parts of Upstate New York) and thus for those states, essentially entire states are covered by municipal corporations and counties serve as little more than convenient groupings of municipalities or court districts (see New England town, Local government in New Jersey, etc.) There is a wide variety of ways that states organize themselves, and what people learn about administration in one part of the U.S. has no equivalence in other parts. --Jayron32 14:33, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Cousin marriage in the US

When in American history did cousin marriages become a cultural taboo that it is today? It certainly was an acceptable practice in the 19th centuries even amongst first cousins while you have people today who view marriages between fifth cousins as a repulsive thing. --172.10.138.193 (talk) 20:13, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Our article on Cousin marriage has some history of the laws, rules and preferences. I'd be surprised if many people in America or anywhere else in the world regard marriage between fifth cousins as a repulsive thing. Dbfirs 20:34, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

One factor is going to be availability of unrelated mates. In a place with few options, the rules become more lenient. When you have a larger population and more immigrants, then people tend to be more picky, and they make their laws accordingly. StuRat (talk) 01:46, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

True, but in cities people seem to be unaware of their extended family trees and most don't even know who their fifth cousins are. Even here in the English countryside with few immigrants (or even migrants from other counties in the past), I don't know some of my fifth cousins (and there are certainly no taboos or laws here). Details of US laws by state is given in Cousin marriage law in the United States by state. Dbfirs 08:17, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

First cousins marrying used to be pretty common, especially in small communities, prior to the 20th century when the practice began to be significantly curbed. I don't know who would be bothered by 5th cousins marrying. FDR and Eleanor were fifth cousins once removed, and I've never heard that there was any big deal made out of that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:46, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Don't know about 5th cousin, but in some traditional Chinese cultures, marriages between two people with the same surname was strongly discouraged, see Chinese marriage#Marriage in a Confucian context. I think a small number may still hold this view see e.g. some discussions [1] [2] [3]. One of those in the first external link did include a case where the genetic test predicted a 5th cousin relationship, but there was still opposition but I doubt even a more distant relationship would have mattered while conversely I'm not sure there would have been any complaints if it was a known third cousin relationship but with different surnames. Nil Einne (talk) 18:05, 21 June 2015 (UTC)