Charter City - Governance and Administrative Structure

Governance and Administrative Structure

The range of what is considered a "charter city" may lead to definitional ambiguities. Most times, however, a charter city is founded by charter before large-scale development takes place. While a city may adopt a new "charter" long after its first codification of rules, as in the cases of many cities in California, generally the designation of a charter city is reserved for those municipalities whose charter guides development decisions or influences the creation of social structure from the beginning, as in the case of Hong Kong. A charter city may have some exemptions from some state or provincial laws, which varies entirely for each particular region.

With the help of a guiding charter, cities may be able to avoid administrative inefficiencies and establish rules with alternate social motivations. Thus, one benefit of charter cities is the freedom they offer in establishment of rules of governance. For example, many charter cities, like Hong Kong and Singapore as cities, use alternative forms of property taxation. Because charter cities are often founded with a goal of large-scale urban development, efficient use of the city's limited land is of utmost importance, for both the economic sustainability of the citizens and the government units. Thus, rather than using the traditional tax on both property and land, charter cities may use land value taxation, which taxes only the value of land, thus not providing disincentives for development.