Unincorporated community (United States)

In law, an unincorporated area is a region of land that is not governed by a local municipal corporation; similarly an unincorporated community is a region of land that is not governed by its own local municipal corporation, but rather is administered as part of larger administrative divisions, such as a township, parish, borough, county, city, canton, state, province or country. Occasionally, municipalities dissolve or disincorporate, which may happen if they become fiscally insolvent, and services become the responsibility of a higher administration. In some countries, such as in Brazil, Japan, France or the United Kingdom, all areas of the country are incorporated. In the United States, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) calls unincorporated areas "populated places".

Unlike many other countries, Australia has only one level of local government immediately beneath state and territorial governments. A local government area (LGA) often contains several towns and even entire cities. Thus, aside from very sparsely populated areas and a few other special cases, almost all of Australia is part of an LGA. Unincorporated areas are often in remote locations, cover vast areas or have very small populations.

Postal addresses in unincorporated areas, as in other parts of Australia, normally use the suburb or locality names gazetted by the relevant state or territorial government. Thus, there is rarely any ambiguity regarding addresses in unincorporated areas.

The Australian Capital Territory has no municipalities and is in some sense an unincorporated area. The territorial government is directly responsible for matters normally carried out by local government.

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