Municipal jurisdiction

The word township is used to refer to various kinds of settlements in different countries. While a township may be associated with an urban area, there are many exceptions to this rule. In Australia, Canada, and the United States, they may be settlements too small to be considered urban.

In Australia, the designation of "township" traditionally refers to a small town or a small community in a rural district; such a place in Britain might qualify as a village or a hamlet. The term refers purely to the settlement; it does not refer to a unit of government; townships are governed as part of a larger (e.g., shire or city) council.

In Canada, two kinds of township occur in common use.

In China, townships are found at the fourth level of the administrative hierarchy, together with ethnic townships, towns and subdistricts.

In the context of Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and CIS states, the term is sometimes used to denote a small semi-urban, sometimes industrial, settlement and used to translate the terms поселок городского типа (townlet), посад (posad), местечко (mestechko, from Polish "miasteczko", a small town; in the cases of predominant Jewish population the latter is sometimes translated as shtetl).

In local government in New Zealand, there are no longer towns or townships. All land is part of either a "city" (mostly urban) or a "district" (mostly rural). The term "municipality" has become rare in New Zealand since about 1979 and has no legal status.

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