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Re: UK & USA counties
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Nick Hudson
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Oct 24, 2003 22:44 PDT
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If you are really being pedantic at least one state border in Australia has
shifted. This is the NSW/Victoria, which is defined as the middle of the
Murray River. However, the Murray River shifts uneasily in its bed from year
to year.
The problem got a fair amount of public airing about 30 years ago when, if I
remember rightly, there was a jurisdictional dispute over a body which was
washed up on a sandbar in the middle of the river...
I seem to remember hearing that the Rio Grande is the same. The US/Mexican
frontier from El Paso to the sea is wherever the Rio Grande happens to be
that day. Like the Murray, it comes and goes.
--
Nick Hudson, Hudson Publishing
9 Panmure Street, Newstead 3462, Victoria, Australia
Phone 61+3 5476 2795 Fax 61+3 5476 2744
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| | From: Patti Ordower <POrd-@libertyfund.org>
To: EDl-@topica.com
Subject: RE: EDline: UK & USA counties
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 0:21
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| | | | Anne said:
| | This must be a win for the Post Office, as I don't think they ever
surrendered the 'traditional' county names and borders
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|
Then Beck said:
| | Do other countries have this problem - do the US state boundaries ever
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change? Or is it only in
| | the UK that we put up with this kind of nonsense?
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And Cathy added:
| | The USA and Australia are both a collective of states (call it a union
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or
federation or what you will). Changing the boundary would lead to a
major
consitutional crisis, I suspect.
| | On the other hand, in Australia we have entities called Shires and
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Municipalities, and their boundaries can be changed at the whim of any
state
government.
In the USA, as Cathy alluded to, we were states before we were a nation,
so those boundaries don't change. And I've never heard of our counties,
the next size downward in political entity (and called parishes in
Louisiana), changing borders; but townships, cities, and municipalities,
among the many names for local entities, change borders for political
and economic reasons.
Here in Indianapolis, the city government decided to annex the rest of
the county to itself, thereby gaining population and land. I suppose it
was for political advantage (and I think that's how Indy became one of
the top 10 cities in the US), and several of the smaller towns fought it
and won. So within the borders of the city of Indianapolis, we have the
cities of Beech Grove, Lawrence, and Speedway (home of the Indpls 500)
with their own mayors and government. I don't think the state
governments have any say-so--the entities battle it out amongst
themselves.
I found the annexation fascinating because I'm a transplant, so if I'm
wrong, I'd love to be corrected.
Patti
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