Neighborhood Governance II

Note: This post was edited on Jan. 20, 2007. Hotlinked image(s) were removed. Follow the link(s) to the image location(s). In the post titled Neighborhood Governance I, I highlighted three cities with neighborhood-level governance programs. In this post, I provide information on the number of local governments (types of "municipalities") in the U.S. The information is taken from Local Government in the United States by Vincent Ostrom, Robert Bish, and Elinor Ostrom (table 8.2, 1982 Census Data). Counties................3041 Municipalities.......19,086 Townships.............16,761 School districts......14,957 Special districts.....28, 719 for a total of 82,564 local governments. I am not sure of the distinctions, especially among the first three types. Township is defined as "an administrative division of a county"[1] or "one of five types and one of eleven forms of municipal government" [2] in New Jersey. Alternatively, a township can be defined through visual narrative, as in the example of the Durham Township (Pennsylvania) photoblog: http://www.durhamtownship.com/index.html. Sources http://www.kunsman-eichlin.net/Maps/Thumbs/1876%20-%20Durham%20Twp.,%20Bucks%20Co.,%20PA.jpg [1] http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=township [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township_(New_Jersey)