Municipality in the context of Polycentric metropolitan area

A capital city, or just capital, is the municipality holding primary status in a country, state, province, department, or other subnational division, usually as its seat of government. A capital is typically a city that physically encompasses the government's offices and meeting places; the status as capital is often designated by law or a constitution. In some jurisdictions, including several countries, different branches of government are in different settlements, sometimes meaning there are multiple official capitals. In some cases, a distinction is made between the official (constitutional) capital and the seat of government.

English-language media often use the name of the capital metonymically to refer to the government sitting there. Thus, "London–Washington relations" is understood to mean diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the United States.

A metropolitan area or metro is a region consisting of a densely populated urban agglomeration and its surrounding territories which share industries, commercial areas, transport network, infrastructure and housing. A metropolitan area usually comprises multiple principal cities, jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, townships, boroughs, cities, towns, exurbs, suburbs, counties, districts and even states and nations in areas like the eurodistricts. As social, economic and political institutions have changed, metropolitan areas have become key economic and political regions.

In the United States, metropolitan areas are delineated around the core of a core based statistical area, which is defined as an urban area and includes central and outlying counties. In other countries metropolitan areas are sometimes anchored by one central city such as the Paris metropolitan area (Paris). In other cases, metropolitan areas contain multiple centers of equal or close to equal importance, especially in the United States; for example, the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area has eight principal cities. The Islamabad–Rawalpindi metropolitan area in Pakistan, the Rhine-Ruhr in Germany, and the Randstad in The Netherlands are other examples.

Special districts (also known as special service districts, special district governments, or limited purpose entities) are independent, special-purpose governmental units that exist separately from local governments such as county, municipal, and township governments, with substantial administrative and fiscal independence. They are formed to perform a single function or a set of related functions. The term special district governments as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau excludes school districts. In 2017, the U.S. had more than 51,296 special district governments.

In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city or town council and at least some other arms of the local government. It also often functions as the office of the mayor (or other executive), if the relevant municipality has such an officer. In large cities, the local government is often administratively expansive, and the city hall may bear more resemblance to a municipal capitol building.

By convention, until the middle of the 19th century, a single large open chamber (or "hall") formed an integral part of the building housing the council and such other organs of government as supported it. The hall may be used for council meetings and other significant events. This large chamber, the "town hall" (and its later variant "city hall") became synonymous with the whole building, and, synecdochically, the municipal government headquartered there. The terms "council chambers", "municipal building" or variants may be used locally in preference to "town hall" if no such large hall is present within the building.

Corinth (/ˈkɒrɪnθ/ KORR-inth; Greek: Κόρινθος, romanized: Kórinthos, Modern Greek pronunciation: [ˈkorinθos]) is a municipality in Corinthia in Greece. The successor to the ancient city of Corinth, it is a former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, which is located in south-central Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform, it has been part of the municipality of Corinth, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit. It is the capital of Corinthia.

It was founded as Nea Korinthos (Νέα Κόρινθος), or New Corinth, in 1858 after an earthquake destroyed the existing settlement of Corinth, which had developed in and around the site of the ancient city.

The municipalities of Greece (Greek: δήμοι, romanized: dímoi [ˈðimi], in singular case Greek: δήμος, romanized: dímos) are the lowest level of government within the organizational structure of the state. As of 2021, there are 332 municipalities, further divided into 1036 municipal units and 6136 communities. The new municipalities may be subdivided into municipal units (δημοτικές ενότητες, dimotikés enótites), consisting of the pre-Kallikratis municipalities. These were further subdivided into municipal communities (δημοτικές κοινότητες, dimotikés koinótites) and local communities (τοπικές κοινότητες, topikés koinótites) according to population, but are simply named communities (κοινότητες, koinótites) since the entry into force of the Kleisthenis I Programme on 1 September 2019.

Municipal units and communities do not have legal personality and are not self-governing entities. Municipal units function as electoral districts for their municipalities, but their territories have no associated councils of their own. Communities have popularly elected councils which their respective municipalities are obligated to fund, but these councils are only advisory in nature.

A county is a type of officially recognized geographical division within a modern country, federal state, or province. Counties are defined in diverse ways, but they are typically current or former official administrative divisions within systems of local government, and in this sense counties are similar to shires, and typically larger than municipalities. Various non-English terms can be translated as "county" or "shire" in other languages, and in English new terms with less historical connection have been invented such as "council area" and "local government district". On the other hand, in older English-speaking countries the word can still refer to traditional historical regions such as some of those which exist in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The term is also sometimes used for districts with specific non-governmental purposes such as courts, or land registration.

Historically the concept of a geographical administrative "county" is European (from French: comté, Latin: comitatus), and represented the territorial limits of the jurisdiction of a medieval count, or a viscount (French: vîcomte, Latin: vicecomes) supposedly standing in the place of a count. However, there were no such counts in medieval England, and when the French-speaking Normans took control of England after 1066 they transplanted the French and medieval Latin terms to describe the pre-existing Anglo Saxon shires, but they did not establish any system placing the administration of shires under the control of high-level nobles. Instead, although there were exceptions, the officers responsible for administrative functions, such as tax collection, or the mustering of soldiers, were sheriffs, theoretically assigned by the central government, and controlled directly by the monarch.

A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions of municipalities, school district, or political district.

A comune (pronounced [koˈmuːne]; pl.: comuni, pronounced [koˈmuːni]) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions (regioni) and provinces (province). The comune can also have the title of città (lit. 'city').

Formed praeter legem according to the principles consolidated in medieval municipalities, the comune is provided for by article 114 of the Constitution of Italy. It can be divided into frazioni, which in turn may have limited power due to special elective assemblies.

Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state. A municipal council or local council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, borough council, rural council, village council, board of aldermen, or board of selectmen.

Local governments typically constitute a subdivision of a higher-level political or administrative unit, such as a nation or state. Local governments generally act within the powers and functions assigned to them by law or directives of a higher level of government. In federal states, local government generally comprises a third or fourth level of government, whereas in unitary states, local government usually occupies the second or third level of government.

A municipally owned corporation is a corporation owned by a municipality. They are typically "organisations with independent corporate status, managed by an executive board appointed primarily by local government officials, and with majority public ownership." Some municipally owned corporations rely on revenue from user fees, distinguishing them from agencies and special districts funded through taxation. Municipally owned corporations may also differ from local bureaucracies in funding, transaction costs, financial scrutiny, labour rights, permission to operate outside their jurisdiction, and, under some circumstances, in rights to make profits and risk of bankruptcy.

The causes and effects of municipally owned corporations are posited to be different from those of state-owned enterprises. Corporatization may be more utilised locally rather than nationally allowing more hybrid or flexible forms of public service delivery such as public-private partnerships and inter-municipal cooperation. It also allows charging user fees. Effects can be different because of lower regulator expertise, lower contracting capacity for municipalities, and the higher presence of scale economies. Current research shows that municipally owned corporations are frequently more efficient than bureaucracy but have higher failure rates because of their legal and managerial autonomy. An additional problem is the fact that municipally owned corporations often have more than one municipal owner, and conflict between municipal owners can lead to reduced output for the municipally owned corporation due to various negative spillovers.

A statute is a law or formal written enactment of a legislature. Statutes typically declare, command or prohibit something. Statutes are distinguished from court law and unwritten law (also known as common law) in that they are the expressed will of a legislative body, whether that be on the behalf of a country, state or province, county, municipality, or so on. They are also distinguished from secondary legislation, or regulations, that are issued by an executive body under authority granted by a statute. Depending on the legal system, a statute may also be referred to as an "act."

The municipalities of Puerto Rico (Spanish: municipios de Puerto Rico) are second-level administrative divisions defined with geographic boundaries and governmental authority in the archipelago and island of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the U.S. Amounting to 78 incorporated towns and cities equivalent to U.S. counties, two of which are outside the main island, namely the smaller islands of Vieques and Culebra, the municipalities are governed by a popularly elected strong mayor and unicameral legislature. They are subdivided into 902 barrios, third-level divisions controlled by the municipal government. As a jurisdiction under U.S. sovereignty, Puerto Rico does not have first-level administrative units akin to states or provinces.

The municipalities of Puerto Rico operate under the Municipal Code of Puerto Rico (Law. No. 107 of 2020), which superseded the Autonomous Municipalities Act of Puerto Rico (Law No. 81 of 1991), as established by the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico, the governmental body responsible for their organization under Section 1, Article VI of the Constitution of Puerto Rico. Electorally, the municipalities are grouped into eight senatorial districts and forty representative districts, representing roughly equal populations in the Legislative Assembly.

A borough in some U.S. states is a unit of local government or other administrative division below the level of the state. The term is currently used in six states:

• A type of municipality: Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania (also formerly Michigan and Minnesota)
• A subdivision of a consolidated city, corresponding to another present or previous political subdivision: New York and Virginia
• In Alaska only, a borough is a county-equivalent.

Pueblo is a term primarily used in Puerto Rico to refer to the municipal district (barrio) that serves as the administrative, historic and cultural center of a municipality. The concept of pueblo is often used locally as analogous to the concept of downtown in U.S. cities. Pueblos are officially called barrio-pueblo by the United States Census since 1990.