Why does Virginia have so many little counties inside of counties?

Virginia has a deep history anon use context clues

>>132031157
All incorporated cities in Virginia are separate from their surrounding counties.

>>132031369
is it beneficial for an incorporated city to not be part of the county they should be in?

>>132031157
It's called gerrymandering.

The republicans here have set up the districts so that they have decent margins in all districts (think 55%) and that places where they aren't competitive are 90%+ democrat.

This gives them a competitive advantage in the house.

It sucks, and republicans should be ashamed of themselves.

>>132031564
County and city boundaries have nothing to do with gerrymandering. Northern Virginia needs to peel off and become part of that shit hole Maryland.

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>>132031369
Take my state of Pennsylvania for example. We have different types of subdivisions. At the higher level there are counties, but each of those counties is divided into townships and boroughs.
Townships are large collections of towns and surrounding lands. Boroughs are singular towns. A collection of both make up a County. On this map the borougs are denoted by the light gray and the others lands are collected into townships.

For the record, Philadelphia happens to also be its own county, which Pittsburgh is in Allegheny County but does not take up the entire division.

>>132031564
i counted 15 of these city/counties blue and i counted 6 of them red. How exactly does this help the republicans?

i even added a bunch of them with the county they should be in and together trump still would have won the entire county in the ones i added. wouldnt more little blue city/counties be beneficial to dems then???
In what way exactly do the GOP benefit from this?

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>>132031561

It goes both ways but it's usually bad for the city because the cities are usually poorer than their surrounding counties so they collect less revenue per capita.

On the other hand, cities used to be able to annex land from counties with a judicial process and would do this in selfish ways to increase tax revenue. So, for example, they might annex a big shopping center that would pay tons of property tax, but not annex the dirtpoor hamlet down the road.

The General Assembly, however, has put a stop to annexation by cities. They renew a law banning it every time it expires. I believe this started in the mid-70s.
>>132031564
>It's called gerrymandering.

No, this has nothing to do with electoral politics. The electoral districts (state senate, house of delegates, congressional districts) do not have to follow any of those lines.

It does have a local electoral impact in that cities elect their own local politicians and are completely independent of the county. So, for example, highly liberal Charlottesville could elect a city council that tried to remove confederate monuments, which wouldn't have happened if voters in the surrounding, more conservative county had had some say.

But, like I said, these aren't really electoral lines, and they are mostly static, unlike districts which get redrawn every ten years according to population.

IIRC the only other fully independent cities in the US are Baltimore, St Louis, and Carson City.

The question of WHY Virginia has independent cities is a very interesting one but the General Assembly kept no records of debate etc. before 1870 so all we have are theories.

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>>132031564
These are the congressional districts, they are transient and distinct from county divisions, which are permanent.

Intriguing that gerrymandering is only considered a problem when one party manages to beat the other one at its own game.

>>132032235
It's not gerrymandering, it's just how VA does their administrative districts. See my post above for PA. The counties look very similar, where the largest towns will be in their own group.

>>132032627
PA is pretty normal as far as counties go. The only thing that throws people off is that they follow the topography instead of being a bunch of squares like in square states. It doesn't really have strange bits like mini city-state counties.

Other states are definitely weirder. Even NY has something a bit odd going on with NYC boroughs, if you look at it from the perspective of national irregularities.

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The best breakdown of Virginia districts, and many other aspects of Virginia life, is here:

http://www.virginiaplaces.org/vacities/

>>132032609

>Intriguing that gerrymandering is only considered a problem when one party manages to beat the other one at its own game.

There's an interesting piece in the American Conservative arguing that reapportionment itself is the problem:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-legislatures-are-polarized-between-extreme-factions/

Good to see a thread on /pol/ that's actually about politics and not race baiting. Politicians in Virginia prided themselves on not race baiting like other southerners (until court-sanctioned desegregation, then shit hit the fan).

>>132032596
very informative. thank you. which state are you from?

Virginia independent cities are always interesting to look at in how they developed, and also some of their anomalies.

Leesburg (in Louden Co.) is the largest town in Virginia with 52000 people, but Norton (enclave within Wise Co.) is the smallest city and has 4000 people.

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>>132033372

Guess

Another really interesting aspect of Virginia politics is how the Democratic party went from being a racist and conservative party to being more or less in line with the national party. It was a really involved and complicated process with lots of personal drama, the book to read is Atkinson's The Dynamic Dominion: Realignment and the Rise of Virginia's Republican Party Since 1945

VA anon here, the gerrymandering in Virginia is awful, we even learn about it in high school government class because so many people from both parties want awareness towards the subject to be raised.

The counties within counties thing though are independent cities that broke off, kinda confusing and I don't even really understand all of it.