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In United States law, a region of land is unincorporated if it is not a part of any municipality. To "incorporate" in this context means to form a municipal corporation, i.e., a city or similar. Unincorporated, in turn, implies no city and hence no city, town, village, or other municipal government.
Thus, an unincorporated community is usually not subject to or taxed by a city government. However, such regions are generally administered by default as a part of larger territorial divisions such as: township, county, state, province, canton, parish, or country. It is uncommon, but not unknown, for small towns in fiscal crisis to disincorporate in order to have services provided by a higher administration.
In the United States, unincorporated regions tend to be fairly rare in the densely-populated northeastern and midwestern states, but are very common in the western and southwestern states, like California and Nevada, and in the southeastern states, like Florida, Maryland, and Virginia. Unlike most other states, Maryland in particular grants significant home-rule powers to its counties, hence population centers comprising tens of thousands - including virtually all of suburban Baltimore - have little incentive to incorporate. The state of Hawaii takes the concept to its logical conclusion: it has no incorporated cities as subcounty governments (the City and County of Honolulu is the state's only "city") and all its "towns" are administered at the county level.
In the context of the United States insular areas, the word "unincorporated" means that the territory has not been formally and irrevocably incorporated into the United States. (See: incorporated territory.) Unincorporated insular areas are therefore potentially subject to being sold or otherwise transferred to another power, or, conversely, being granted independence. However, neither fate seems likely to occur in the foreseeable future to the five remaining major unincorporated U.S. insular areas, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or the Northern Mariana Islands.
See also: unincorporated community
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