List of communities in Alberta

The Province of Alberta, Canada, is divided into 10 different types of – urban municipalities (including cities, towns, villages and summer villages), specialized municipalities, rural municipalities (including municipal districts/counties, improvement districts and special areas), Métis settlements, and Indian reserves. All types of municipalities are governed by local residents and were incorporated under various provincial acts, with the exception of improvement districts (governed by either the provincial or federal government), and Indian reserves (governed by local First Nations people under federal jurisdiction).

Alberta also has numerous unincorporated communities (including urban service areas, and a townsite) that are not independent municipalities in their own right. However, they are all recognized as sub-municipal entities by Alberta Municipal Affairs under the jurisdiction of specialized municipalities or rural municipalities, with the exception of the lone townsite (its jurisdiction is shared with an Indian reserve that surrounds it).

With the exception of Métis settlements, Statistics Canada recognizes all of Alberta’s municipalities as census subdivisions and groups them into 19 census divisions based on geography. Within census divisions, Statistics Canada groups some of Alberta’s municipalities/census subdivisions into two census metropolitan areas (CMAs) or 12 census agglomerations (CAs) for enumeration purposes. All CMAs include large urban centres and surrounding census subdivisions. All CAs also include large urban centres and in some cases their surrounding census subdivisions.

With the exception of Indian reserves, the administration of municipalities in Alberta is regulated by the Municipal Government Act, the Special Areas Act and the Metis Settlements Act.

As of 2012, the combined unofficial population of all of Alberta’s municipalities was 3,768,284.

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