Brief
More than a third of Americans live in no incorporated city
American Factbook Research
Published
Data retrieved
The Census Bureau estimates 341,784,857 people in the fifty states and the District on July 1, 2025. 126,122,430 of them — 36.9% — live outside every incorporated place: outside every city, town, village and borough with a government of its own. For them, the local page on this site is the county's.
Vermont has 76.2% of its residents outside every incorporated place; nationally, 36.9%
The fifteen states with the largest share of residents living outside every incorporated city, town, village and borough, from the Census Bureau's July 1 population estimates.
Source: The Census Bureau
About this chart
The figures
| State | Share outside every incorporated place |
|---|---|
| Vermont | 76.2% |
| Hawaii | 76.1% |
| Maryland | 74.9% |
| Maine | 72.0% |
| Delaware | 71.5% |
| New Hampshire | 68.6% |
| West Virginia | 66.0% |
| Virginia | 64.5% |
| South Carolina | 62.7% |
| Connecticut | 60.9% |
| Pennsylvania | 56.3% |
| Georgia | 54.3% |
| Louisiana | 52.4% |
| New Jersey | 52.3% |
| Florida | 50.1% |
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Where it is most and least common
It ranges from most of a state to almost none of it. Vermont has the largest share of its people outside every incorporated place, 76.2%, then Hawaii at 76.1% and Maryland at 74.9%. Utah has the smallest, 6.2%. The chart below lists the fifteen states where the share is highest; every state's figure is on its page.
What "outside every city" does and does not mean
It does not mean outside every local government. In New England, and in much of the Northeast and Midwest, towns and townships govern, and the Census Bureau counts them as county subdivisions rather than places. A Vermonter outside every incorporated place usually lives in a town with a town meeting. A reader in those states should read this figure as a count of people outside a city, not as a count of people with no government nearer than the county.
It does not say who provides what a city would. That differs from one county to the next — a county, a township, a special district — and the Bureau's population files do not record it. This brief does not guess.
The places are the ones the estimates program counts: incorporated places, and Urban Honolulu, the one census-designated place the program estimates, because Hawaii has no incorporated places. Every other census-designated place — a community the Bureau draws and names for counting, with no government of its own — is outside the count of places here, so its residents are counted as outside every incorporated place, which they are.
Both sides of the share are the same program's, for the same year: the state's July 1 estimate and the sum of its places' estimates. Nothing here divides one survey's count by another's.
What this cannot show
- A place here is an incorporated place — a city, town, village or borough — as the Population Estimates Program counts them, with Urban Honolulu. New England towns and the townships of other states govern but are county subdivisions, not places, so their residents are counted as outside every incorporated place.
- The District of Columbia is one city, Washington, and is left out of the state ranking: its share is zero by construction.
- The figures are July 1 estimates for the newest year the program has published, not a count.
- Puerto Rico is not included: the estimates program publishes its municipios, not incorporated places in the same sense.
Sources
- Census Bureau population estimates — incorporated places and New England towns, U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. Government work. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
- Census Bureau population estimates — nation and states, with components of change, U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. Government work, published by the Census Bureau as open data. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
Every figure above is the recorded result of a query checked into the repository alongside this text. Continuous integration re-runs those queries and refuses the change if a number here and a number there disagree. Read the methodology, or the datasets behind it.
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