What is an independent city?

The Census definition

The Census Bureau's glossary says that in four states, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada and Virginia, one or more incorporated places are independent of any county organization and so are primary divisions of their states. It calls these independent cities and treats them as equivalent to counties.

In practice that means an independent city has its own 5 digit county code, appears as its own row in every county table, and does not count toward the surrounding county's population. The codes start at 500, so Richmond city, Virginia is 51760 while Richmond County is 51159.

Virginia's independent cities

38 of the 41 are in Virginia. Counting them, Virginia has 133 county-equivalents in total. Virginia's independent cities together hold 2,601,250 residents, 29.5% of the state. The smallest is Norton city, with 3,478 people.

Cities and counties with the same name

6 independent cities share a name with a county in the same state. They are separate units with separate codes, and mixing them up is a common error when joining county data by name.

The three outside Virginia

Baltimore, Maryland; St. Louis, Missouri; and Carson City, Nevada are the others. Baltimore city (568,271 residents) and Baltimore County (852,425) are separate, as are St. Louis city (279,695) and St. Louis County (992,929). Carson City has no same-named county. Independent cities as a group hold 3,507,364 residents, 1.03% of the US total.

All independent cities by population

How big independent cities are

Independent cities are small in land. Their median land area is 14.5 square miles, against 616 for all county-equivalents. Their median population is 27,800. Because they pack people into little land, they rank high on density: 39 of them are in the national top 10% of county densities. 32 of the 41 smallest county-equivalents by land are independent cities, which is why the smallest counties list reads like a list of Virginia cities.

Handling independent cities in data

Treat each independent city as its own county. Do not add it to the county with the same name. If another dataset combines a city with its surrounding county, combine the Census rows the same way before joining.

On maps, independent cities appear as small separate shapes, often surrounded by one county. On this site each one has its own page with a "-city" slug, for example Baltimore city, so it never collides with a county of the same name.

Is my city independent?

Check whether the city has its own row in the county FIPS code lookup. If it does and the code is 500 or higher, it is an independent city. Outside Virginia, Maryland, Missouri and Nevada the answer is always no: every other city in the 50 states lies inside at least one county, even where city and county share a government.