Cities in the United States

Introduction

According to the Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, “Cities, unlike states, are not mentioned in the Constitution. Many other important collective institutions in our society, such as corporations, are not mentioned in the Constitution either. In its effort to determine the constitutional status of cities, the Supreme Court” decided about it in some cases.

Legal Materials

To look up the population of a city, look in the blue pages of Martindale-Hubbell or search U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Finder. To find out the county in which a U.S. city is located, you can also look in the blue pages of Martindale-Hubbell or search NACO’s City-County Search. You could also search the city as the “Feature Name” in the USGS Geographic Names Information System. The Information System will also tell you the city’s population, elevation, latitude and longitude.

To find the mayor of a particular city — or to get basic biographical info on a mayor — search the Meet the Mayors database posted by the United States Conference of Mayors. For more information, or if that doesn’t work, (a) try the city’s Web site and/or (b) search a database of articles from local newspapers.

For information on life in a particular major city, check out CitySearch or find other Internet sites using Yahoo! or another search engine. You can find out a lot about the major cities from the tourist guide books sold in bookstores.

To get local business news, check out a city specific business newspaper, such as the relevant Crain City Publication (e.g., Crain’s New York Business) or Business Journal(e.g., the Baltimore Business Journal); these publications are often included in online news databases.

To check out a city’s economy, see economic indicators posted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics .

Mergent’s Municipal and Government Manual gives a financial profile of larger cities. You can get annual financial reports filed by cities that issue bonds and their debt ratings through the MSRB’s EMMA database. You can also get debt ratings from the individual rating agency web sites listed in the “Debt Ratings” entry.

The tax laws of larger cities are published in the CCH State Tax Reporter for the relevant state. (Note: If you don’t have access to the looseleafs, online versions of the CCH State Tax Reporters are available on Westlaw.)

For more specific information, search for entries (in the Encyclopedia) on selected cities by name.

See Also

Counties
Judicial Districts
Local Laws
Maps
Metropolitan Areas
Municipal Bonds
Population

Finding the law: Cities in the U.S. Code

A collection of general and permanent laws relating to cities, passed by the United States Congress, are organized by subject matter arrangements in the United States Code (U.S.C.; this label examines cities topics), to make them easy to use (usually, organized by legal areas into Titles, Chapters and Sections). The platform provides introductory material to the U.S. Code, and cross references to case law. View the U.S. Code’s table of contents here.