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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
By definition, an unincorporated community in the state of Michigan is a location outside of an incorporated municipality. Simply put, any area outside of an incorporated municipality can be considered a community. Mobile home parks, cookie-cutter subdivisions, three houses at an intersection in the middle of nowhere, apartment complexes, and even grandma's old farmhouse can be loosely defined as a "community" in an unincorporated area. But, there has to be guidelines to ensure that only notable and verifiable communities have a place in Wikipedia.
The state of Michigan recognizes only two forms of incorporated municipalities: cities and villages. Despite what might still appear in some articles, there are no locations defined as a "town" or "hamlet" in the state of Michigan, although these terms do appear sometimes in historical texts. Cities have their own autonomous local government, while villages share these responsibilities with the township(s) in which they are located. Townships—both charter and civil—are defined as "unincorporated" municipalities. Cities, villages, and townships all have defined area and population statistics according to the United States Census Bureau. However, because townships are the only form of unincorporated municipalities, unincorporated communities can only be found within townships. Indian reservations are entirely unique and not discussed, although they have some form of their own legal jurisdiction, even if some of them have portions within an incorporated city or village.
Cities and villages cannot have unincorporated communities within their jurisdiction. Communities within these incorporated municipalities are commonly referred to as neighborhoods. This essay does not address the importance or inclusion of neighborhoods within cities and villages, in which the vast majority are not notable at all unless they are within a major city or part of a designated historic district.
Unincorporated communities do not have any legal recognition as a separate municipality and therefore do not have any defined boundaries or population statistics of their own. They have no tax revenue of their own and do not provide any separate municipal services outside of the township as a whole. Any attempt to include area or population statistics within an unincorporated community article is immediately unverifiable, even if the community itself recognizes a broad area or general number of residents. The only exception to this is unincorporated communities that are also defined by the Census Bureau as a census-designated place (CDP). There are currently 212 census-designated places in Michigan with defined statistics. Not all unincorporated communities are CDPs, but all CDPs are unincorporated communities. Being recognized as a CDP does not give the community any legal autonomy reserved for municipalities.
In some cases, a township or road signage may refer to an unincorporated community as a village, even if it never incorporated throughout its history. Perhaps, they were once informally known as villages in a colloquial sense but never actually became an incorporated municipality. Examples of informal villages may include Scofield, Waltz, and Willow—all of which are described as villages in road signs, historic texts, or township websites but are otherwise unincorporated. To meet state requirements, a village is described in the General Law Village Act of 1895. At that point, maybe some informal villages didn't meet the requirement and abandoned the title; there are also several instances of incorporated villages (and even some cities) losing their municipality status and returning to the control of the township—most notably Au Sable. Former municipal status doesn't apply to incorporated villages and cities that were annexed into surrounding jurisdictions, such as Delray, West Bay City, and more recently Mineral Hills and Stambaugh. These examples are harder to come by, as many communities may have been briefly incorporated villages in the past, and it would take extensive research to find them through old state and census records.
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