on 19/12/2000 5:37 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
In America, you're a city
> if you want to be. I mean, I don't think it takes an act of Congress or a
> Presidential Proclamation for a place to refer to itself as a city. You just
> look around, say to yourself, "Hmm, we're big, lots of people, got a transit
> problem and too much traffic, we must be a city." Well, I joke a bit, but
> not much!
>
> Is it different in the UK? Would Stirling catch it if they said, "visit our
> city" but the Queen of England hadn't told them they could call themselves
> that?
>
> Does this go back to the idea of Burghs being granted by the crown? Or am I
> completely off-base and you wish I'd go away?
It's got to do with the concept of legal entities - ownership of land,
ownership of rights, entitlement to rents, and the right to pass local laws.
The various levels of burgh in Scotland - barony, regality, Royal Burgh etc
- reflect different degrees to which the community (as an entity) can
deputise or act on behalf of the state or monarch. In practice it often
meant grants of land (common land) similar to the estates a king might grant
to a noble. But the heart of it is the concept of the whole town having a
'corporate' identity as if it was a person. And being allowed to hold
markets and fairs, etc.
Cities have a set of additional privileges. They get a new coat of arms (I
don't know if Inverness is doing this or just enhancing an old one) and they
get a Lord Provost (in England, a Lord Mayor) instead of a plain Provost or
Mayor, with a bigger chain to wear and some extra regalia. They used to have
an Archbishop instead of a Bishop, a Cathedral instead of a church, and if
they were on the Monopoly board you would have paid more to land on them.
Cities could also grant free status to a bondsman, but I don't know how that
worked in Scotland. They could issue charters to incorporate guilds of
craftsmen or traders, but so could Burghs in Scotland.
In practice, the powers of a City Council (=Corporation =legal entity) are
much the same as a shire County or a town Borough but - which someone else
can probably illuminate in respect of Inverness - they are usually separate
from the surrounding County. Thus Edinburgh wishes to maintain its status as
a City council, with its own elected councillors, controlling everything
within its city limits. It does not want to be split in two or three, and
have parts taken over by West, Mid and East Lothian or just be the middle of
a big Lothians region, even though that it its geographical role.
Does Inverness, becoming a city, actually change its local government
structure? Does it suddenly acquire redrawn boundaries, with its own
government internally, and leave the running of the surrounding countryside
to a County? Somehow I think not. That would be the *historic* effect of
elevating a place to city status. But Inverness is already the
adminsitrative centre for the surrounding area. I'm pretty sure the
administrative and electoral structures will be untouched and all you will
get is a change of title for the Provost, some new badges and signs and
ornaments, and a load of name changes and adjustments to local ceremony and
protocol.
25 years ago I worked in South Yorkshire which was a newly-created County. I
worked for the county council on contracts, and the rivalry between it and
Sheffield City Council - sitting like a peninsular attached to its former
county now run from humble Barnsley - was considerable.
There is bound to be a Scottish local government expert reading this who can
clarify. I'm just a journalist who did the usual stint covering local
government years ago, had to learn about it, and continue to take some
interest. I would say it is rather like ennobling an individual. It is the
equivalent of giving the city a peerage or a knighthood, of saying 'Rise,
Sir Inverness'.
But no, a town can not just decide it is going to be a city. I've driven
through some of those American cities with two stores, one lamp-post and no
dog! It can't happen here...
David
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