ABSTRACT
As of 2007 there were 19,492 general-purpose municipal governmentscities-in the United States, and they employed more people than the federal government. About twenty of those cities received charters of incorporation well before ratification of the US Constitution, and several others were established urban centers more than a century before the American Revolution.1 Yet despite their estimable size and prevalence in the United States, the city has been a woefully neglected topic within the recent study of American politics.
