User:Kornatice/MoPR
Districts of Puerto Rico, each led by a mayor / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The municipalities of Puerto Rico are the second-order administrative divisions in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. There are 78 such administrative divisions covering all 78 incorporated towns and cities. Each municipality is led by a mayor and divided into barrios, though the latter are not vested with any political authority. Every municipality is governed by the Autonomous Municipalities Act of 1991, which establishes that every municipality must have an elected strong mayor with a municipal legislature as the form of government. Each legislature must be unicameral, with the number of members related to adequate representation of the total municipality's population. In contrast to other jurisdictions, both the mayors and the municipal legislators are elected on the same date and for the same term of office.
Municipalities of Puerto Rico | |
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Location | Commonwealth of Puerto Rico |
Number | 78 |
Populations | 1,818 (Culebra) – 395,326 (San Juan) |
Areas | 4.84 square miles (12.5 km2) (Cataño) – 125.95 square miles (326.2 km2) (Arecibo) |
Government | |
Subdivisions |
From a political and urban design perspective, several differences and similarities exist among municipalities of differing sizes. For instance, municipalities with 50,000 inhabitants or more are considered incorporated cities, while those with fewer than 50,000 are considered incorporated towns.[1] Size affects the autonomy exercised by the jurisdiction: cities provide and manage their own services, while towns typically depend on nearby cities for certain services. All municipalities have a barrio called pueblo proper (English: 'town'), which typically is the site of that municipality's historic Spanish colonial settlement. With development over time, it typically has become that municipality's urban core. Municipalities with large populations, however, may have an urban core that consist of several barrios.
Other differences exist among the municipalities. Economic activity, for example, tends to be concentrated in the metropolitan areas surrounding the cities of San Juan, Ponce, Arecibo, Caguas, Mayaguez, Aguadilla, and Humacao, and most towns are commuter towns. Statistically, the municipality with the largest number of inhabitants is San Juan, with around 400,000, while Culebra is the smallest, with around 1,800. Arecibo is the largest in terms of geography, with around 125 mi2, and Cataño the smallest, with around 4.8 mi2.