Alberta Counties

Alberta has several different types of jurisdictional regions which are referred to in the RadioReference database as 'counties'.

• Counties Are no longer a municipal status type in Alberta. Counties are now Municipal Districts. Municipalities that were once officially incorporated as counties were continued under the Municipal Government Act as municipal districts and were permitted to retain the term county in their official names. For the purposes of the RRDB, counties and municipal districts (often abbreviated MDs) are essentially the same.
• Municipal Districts A municipal district (MD., also called a county) is a government form in rural areas of the province. It includes farmlands as well as unincorpo-rated communities such as hamlets and rural residential subdivisions For the purposes of the RRDB, counties and MD are essentially the same.
• Special Areas are geographically similar to counties and MDs, but their advisory councils report directly to the provincial government's Municipal Affairs department. Interestingly enough, through various rewriting of boundaries, while there are only three Special Areas in Alberta, they are numbered Special Area 2 through Special Area 4. In the RRDB, they are treated as counties.
• Improvement Districts are generally low-population regions and typically lie entirely with national parks, provincial parks, or international parks. They have no councils as they are governed by the appropriate entity depending on their park status. In the RRDB, these are treated as counties.
• Cities are urban centers of population 10,000 or greater. Many cities in Alberta are independent of their surrounding counties; examples - Calgary is not part of the surrounding county of Rockyview. However, Leduc is part of adjoining Leduc County. In the RRDB, independent cities Calgary and Edmonton are treated as separate counties.
• Specialized Municipalities are regions which do not fit under any of the above categories but still incorporate as a coherent region. In the RRDB, specialized municipalities (Wood Buffalo, Crowsnest Pass, and Strathcona County are examples) are treated the same as counties.
• Townsites are settlements which are comparable in size and development to an incorporated town in the Alberta government's definition, but are located on First Nations land ("indian reserves"; see below). Alberta only has one townsite - Redwood Meadows - and in the RRDB, it is treated the same as a county.
• Indian Reserves (First Nations) and Métis Settlements are federally and provincially (respectively) governed/managed regions inhabited by aboriginal Canadians. In the RRDB, both these types of regions are treated the same as counties. Note: There is work underway to consolidate data and leave only the largest First Nations in the RRDB as independent database entries; the smaller Reserves/First Nations/Métis settlements would be included in the geographically nearest county's database entry.