Talk:List of municipalities in California

old comments
What are the criteria for being on this list? We already have all incorporated places listed on each county page. -- Zoe

It's Angel's Camp, not Angels Camp. -- Zoe

Also, San Pedro is part of Los Angeles, it isn't a city on its own. And there is no such city as Yosemite. --

There is no apostrophe in Angels Camp -- see their web site at []. Yosemite was listed as a city in my atlas and at [], but after some checking, it seems to have been corrected in a later edition of the atlas. And you're right that San Pedro was annexed by Los Angeles in 1907. Any more mistakes? GUllman

Why have you listed both "South San Francisco" and "S. San Francisco"?? Moncrief, 10 Mar 2004

Revamped and New Pages
The page is revamped because it was intended for incorporated cities only like other state's cities list, however, the previous list has been moved to List of cities, places, and neighborhoods in California to best fit the content of the article. --Moreau36; 0326 2 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Bridgeport, Hydesville, San Andreas, and San Pedro are still on this list, but they are not incorporated cities. There are 478 incorporated cities in California.  I intend to verify these four unincorporated places are represented in the list of places page, and then delete them from here.
 * --GraemeMcRae 04:47, 14 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I added the names of the counties and dates of incorporation for each city
 * --GraemeMcRae 06:49, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Cities and towns?
did a recent edit to this page marking some communities as "town". I thought that in California there were no distinctions between sizes and types of cities like there are in many Northeastern US states. Blank Verse 15:23, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I did the editing. There is indeed no essential distinction between incorporated cities and incorporated towns. It's just those "towns" call themselves such and reflect this in their names as "Town of XYZ" instead of "City of XYZ".
 * --WeiGreatness 3:36, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Since there is no real distinction between the two, then the information is basically useless and IMHO does not belong in the Wikipedia. It would make more sense to show which cities are general law cities and which are charter cities according to State of California law (and use a separate column instead of the asterisk). Blank Verse 15:06, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

COMMON SENSE tells us the difference between a city and a town! The Ancient Greeks knew this difference, and so do we -- despite the fact that some state legislatures have been dim enough to ignore the difference. The difference between a city and a town lies in population, and one very common demarkation is that a city MUST have a population of at least 60,000 people (now). There is a fuzzier demarkation at the bottom between a village and a town. These divisions are built into our language, and in fact into all Western languages, and probably Eastern ones, too. In English and German, we have these pairs, in increasing order of size: village = Dorf; town = Stadt; city = City (an urban area with a population of more than 100,000 people). Furthermore, "Burg" was the old German word for a fortified town, which was an important thing in medieval times. Nowadays, "Stadt" also refers to "downtown" in a large city.

Most Americans and British cannot tell the difference between "berg" and "burg", but the difference is distinct, and the sound is really distinct. Hence the endings of Heidelberg and Hamburg really do sound different.

Likewise, I can really tell the difference between San Francisco and San Fernando just by looking at them. San Fernando and San Sebastian are just specks on the map compared with San Francisco and San Jose'98.67.97.225 (talk) 02:42, 5 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The word "city" was foolishly used in place names a long time ago -- for places that are NOT cities, and they usually have never been. They simply never have been large enough. Just because some people were foolish a long time ago doesn't mean that we have to persist with it. These are not cities because they are too small:
 * Arkansas City, Brigham City, Culver City, Elizabeth City, Forest City, Idaho City (Colorado), Johnson City (Texas), Lake City (Florida or Tennessee), Michigan City, Oregon City, Phenix City, Polk City, Union City (several states)...
 * Vatican City isn't really a city, either.98.67.97.225 (talk) 03:11, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
 * We should just accept that the definition of a "city" varies from place to place. In articles about California, we use California's definition (enshrined in law) of what constitutes a "city", not yours.  Best regards, —Stepheng3 (talk) 18:25, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

What happened to the the "O" cities?
Like Oakland? it jumps from N to P —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.212.155.200 (talk) 01:36, 2 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The "O" section was deleted by vandals. I restored it on Feb 11th.  Stepheng3 (talk) 03:18, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

What happened to the "H" cities?
Hey, where are the "H" cities? There are several cities with H in California, like Hayward, Hawthorne, Huntington Beach and the like —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.45.131.105 (talk) 00:47, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * An IP user deleted the H section back in December. I have reverted the change. Stepheng3 (talk) 03:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Studio City
Why is Studio City listed? It's not an incorporated city, but a district of the City of Los Angeles. 99.129.49.150 (talk) 18:49, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Stepheng3 (talk) 20:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Studio City and other San Fernando Valley districts voted for secession in July 2006, but wasn't enough to get approved by the city of Los Angeles nor the Los Angeles County board of supervisors. In my Thomas Bros. California road atlas, I get Tujunga with a dark circle to indicate it's an incorporated city (but small letters, while cities have big lettering) except its' still a district of the city of Los Angeles. They attempt to seceded from the city of L.A. in the early 1990's, probably the mapmakers thought Tujunga had already did (wrong.). + 71.102.10.169 (talk) 15:30, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Nomenclature
As there is only one class of municipality in California, which can be termed either "city" or "town" with no legal significance hinging on the name, shouldn't this be renamed to "list of municipalities in California"? Postdlf (talk) 18:54, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Makes sense to me. --Stepheng3 (talk) 20:41, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * "Municipality" often means different things in different places -- different states, different countries. Sometimes, I have seen something called a "municipality" when all it was is an unincorporated village and its surrounding farmland. [I know this sounds foolish, but there are lots of strange governments.] On the other hand, in North America, Australia, etc., we often think of a "municipality" as being something a place on the order of New York City, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, San Francisco, Dallas - Ft. Worth, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston....
 * The word "municipality" has become so vague that it is practically useless.98.67.97.225 (talk) 02:53, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

featured list candidacy
As someone who's been tending this list for over a year, I'd love to see it featured, and I hope other editors are as excited about this as I am. One thing I know it needs is to be made sortable, and I think I can do that easily, if there's no objection. Personally, I'd like to see additional information for each municipality, such as the county it's in, its coordinates, and other rarely-changing information of that sort. Population figures might be worth adding; I'm not sure. Opinions? --Stepheng3 (talk) 17:55, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Coordinates and population would be good. One of the problems with sorting is the sheer volume of cities Purplebackpackonthetrail (talk) 18:55, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I've gone ahead and made it a sortable table. If this causes problems, feel free to revert. --Stepheng3 (talk) 17:48, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion
I found this page on my travels around California related articles on Wikipedia. I would suggest making the incorporation dates as year-month-day, so that when you want to sort by the incorporation date, it doesn't just alphabetize the list, but it will show it in chronological order. Just a suggestion. Killiondude (talk) 08:33, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm gradually adding sort templates to the dates, which will have the desired effect while retaining easy readability. I'd welcome your help. --Stepheng3 (talk) 21:24, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * All done. The dates should sort correctly now.  Of course, if I'd known about dts before I started, I would've used it instead of sort.  But I don't think it's worth switching at this point. --Stepheng3 (talk) 01:58, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Cabazon is not the only city to disincorporate. The former city of Hornitos, in Mariposa County was incorporated in 1871 and disincorportaed in 1972, after the population had dipped to under 100 people. I think the disincorporation was done by Mariposa County because a government of the City of Hornitos no longer existed.

The county took the action because title to some land in the area was held by the defunct City of Hornitos

Reference improvements
I added a refimprove tag to this article earlier. My main concern had been that the population column appeared to be completely unreferenced, but on re-reviewing the article I see that there is a reference for the population but in a different location than I expected. I.e. the citation for the incorporation dates is located in the column header, but the citation for the population is located in the text above the table and not in the column header. That inconsistency confused me when I read too quickly, but was easily correctible (which I have now done). In addition however, the first two paragraphs of the lead include numerous specific facts that need citation, so I feel the refimprove should remain for the time being. Examples of facts needing citation include the obsolescence of "township", the equivalence of "city" and "town", the history of Willow Glen and Alviso and Cabazon. &mdash; Ipoellet (talk) 16:56, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Former Municipality Table
I'm working on one on my userpage, if anyone thinks it shouldn't be done, say so or take it down when I finish. Samhuddy (talk) 01:28, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea. I look forward to seeing the list. --Stepheng3 (talk) 02:00, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Sam. Please provide your sources so the data can be verified by others. --Stepheng3 (talk) 17:18, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Merge/redirect List of cities in California (by population) into this page? Discuss
I have suggested on Talk:List of cities in California (by population) merging/redirecting that article into this one, since this one seems better, does everything that List of cities in California (by population) does, and has more content and is better organized. Darkest tree (talk) 20:18, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree. top 100 is arbitrary. my only concern is that this article get better population estimates, as the 2010 census numbers may be out, and this has estimates from 2008. (other article is no better i believe)Mercurywoodrose (talk) 08:14, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * A year has gone by and no objections. Adding merge tags to the articles. Darkest tree (talk) 19:55, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Missing City
The article states that there are 482 municipalities, but the list contains 481. Is there one missing? Mattximus (talk) 19:58, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The list was missing San Mateo, which has now been added. Thanks for catching that. --Kurykh (talk) 11:07, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Just say it: Incorporated
Some people think of the difference between cities and towns like this: incorporated = cities and unincorporated = towns. Maybe this is technically wrong or we have no "common sense" (as earlier stated on this page), but nevertheless I don't think I'm alone in this. As Quincy has been deemed unqualified for the list merely for being unincorporated, that obviously is the salient factor, so why not say so? Just change the name to List of incorporated cities and towns in California. Or, alternatively, List of cities and towns in California (Incorporated). If you state the plan right at the git go, people will know what they are looking at and won't try to stuff the Quincys of the world in the list (which proves the point). CampKohler (talk) 21:16, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Landers (San Bernardino county) and Cabazon (Riverside county) are "towns", but not incorporated or they would been on the list. Cabazon actually was a city from 1956 to 1973 when the city government was disbanded. Landers had a council since 1997 - the third in the Morongo Basin of the Mojave Desert after Yucca Valley (town but incorporated in 1991) and Twentynine Palms (incorporated as a city in 1987). 67.49.89.214 (talk) 14:01, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

12 fastest-growing cities, includes unincorporated Cabazon, in the 2010s, due to low-cost housing in the California Desert region: Adelanto, Apple Valley, California City, Cathedral City, Coachella, Desert Hot Springs, Hesperia, Indio, Lancaster, Palmdale, and Victorville. They are popular with Hispanics and Latinos who relocated from Central L.A. to the suburbs, esp. majorities or pluralities in Indio and Victorville. 2605:E000:100D:E482:E41A:DD9:EED0:F58 (talk) 17:28, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

References to law vs. links.
Reference 5 (currently) points to code sections. Since most codes are online, shouldn't the references be links to the pertinent law? Is there a reason not to do that? What's best practice? CampKohler (talk) 21:21, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Have the cities photos arrangement changed?
I noticed (viewed using latest Chrome with a maximized window) that the photos of the cities, which used to be aligned vertically, taking a lot of space above the list, was recently showing grouped more compactly into a horizontal and vertical alignment. I thought this was a good change, because there was less scrolling required to get to the list and it looked more finished. Today I notice that it is back to the vertical. I haven't looked at recent edits or even know if this is some kind of browser artifact that might change from time to time. Is there some way to fix the photos (at least for a maximized window) in a horizontal and vertical grouping? CampKohler (talk) 21:29, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Code vs. charter?
This may not be the place for such a distinction, but there's an important difference between California cities that are governed by the provisions of the California Government Code and cities that have their own city charters. Should there be another column for "code" and "charter"? --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 20:06, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Mobile
Mattximus, you do realize that on mobile, this requires you to scroll through what amounts to two to three full screen's worth of images before you get to the list right? Timothy Joseph Wood 07:00, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
 * That is normal. Mobile screens are small and most wikipedia pages will require some scrolling to get through the infobox, table of contents, and images. It would be a disservice to wikipedia to go through various pages and delete all images (you deleted every single one) because you don't want to scroll a bit on your phone. Mattximus (talk) 12:04, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

History of state's largest cities
From 1850 to 1940, the largest cities of California were 1. San Francisco, along with (not in rank of order) Los Angeles (became #2 in 1900 and surpassed SF in 1930), Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose, Fresno (the largest in the Central third of the state) and competing were Bakersfield, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Stockton. In 1940, Long Beach entered the top 10. In 1960, Anaheim and in 1970, Santa Ana. In 1970, San Diego surpassed San Francisco as the #2 city, and in 1990, San Jose surpassed San Francisco to become the largest in the northern third of the state. Riverside is now larger than San Bernardino and Santa Barbara dropped from the list in 1960. 67.49.89.214 (talk) 13:52, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

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External links modified
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Central cities in CA (60 of them)
8 out of 10 largest cities are county seats, except Anaheim in Orange county and Long Beach in Los Angeles county; San Francisco itself is a city-county government; and in Riverside county, Indio is a "secondary" county seat being 70 miles away from the "primary" one Riverside. 2605:E000:100D:E482:E41A:DD9:EED0:F58 (talk) 17:14, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Question
Does anyone have an issue with adding a column in there for charter cities vs non-charter cities?Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 02:04, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

A whole column would be a bad idea, it’s already too wide as is. I suppose if you really want to add it you can add the word “chartered” to the relevant cities in the type column, or a footnote for all chartered cities. Mattximus (talk) 03:23, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Agree. I don’t think it’s necessary or even notable enough to include. Pf1127 (talk) 04:51, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

What about a checkmark? (chartered vs. non-chartered)Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 17:52, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

If you really want, why not a symbol in the legend indicating chartered, like the dagger we have for county seats, which can be placed after the word "city" in the type column and the legend can be expanded to include this new symbol? Mattximus (talk) 21:42, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
 * That works. Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 23:10, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Just have to make sure you have a properly cited source which you can add to the header “type” Mattximus (talk) 13:20, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
 * you got it. I'll write it in draft before posting. Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 14:54, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

New template for 2020 Census
Hi everyone, the new census results are coming in a few days, and I'm wondering if anyone else would support this format? Table needs work of course, but this is the idea. 15:06, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

The new July 1, 2020 estimates for cities and towns in the United States have officially been released today. (Please see the accompanying .csv files here: ) Should we add them to the article (and the template above) now, or should we wait until we also have the official results of the April 1, 2020 census? Pf1127 (talk) 20:22, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Pf1127 If we can add them to the template above that would be fantastic, but do we know when the official results are out? I think it's best to wait for the census results as they should be out soon if I am not mistaken. Mattximus (talk) 21:31, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
 * @Mattximus I've heard a number of things since the beginning of the year, so I'm actually not sure. You can find the release schedule here but it's a little unclear as many of the release dates also refer to the July 1, 2020 data and estimates. It sounds like the April 2020 census data will be released at the end of this year or possibly at the beginning of next year when it accompanies the Vintage 2021 tables/estimates or the 2010 to 2020 Intercensal Estimates. Pf1127 (talk) 22:24, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Cities and towns under 5,000 people
It looks like the new redistricting data from the 2020 census contains census counts for local municipalities, but I have been having difficulty finding them for municipalities under 5,000 people (US Census QuickFacts only provides them for municipalities with 5,000 people or greater). I did not have this problem when I helped other editors update List of largest cities in California by population, as even the top 100 cities in California had a population of 84,000 or greater. I see that there are about 50 small municipalities in this range missing new census counts right now, although there are two that seem to have them already. Where did these numbers come from? Were they published with the new redistricting data and are they just in a place that's hard to find? In the meantime, should we hold off on making further edits until we can locate and verify the data we need to complete the table? I would hate for all of our new edits to be rolled back and for all of our work to be lost. Pf1127 (talk) 05:56, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I found all the missing items in a strange place: I've cross referenced it and it is accurate. I can try to add some, the problem is it's very cumbersome... Mattximus (talk) 02:07, 23 August 2021 (UTC)