page_title: Municipality (Austria)
section_title: Types of municipalities
hierarchical_section_title: Municipality (Austria) / Types of municipalities
caption_attribution_description: English: Nymph fountain and town hall on Hauptplatz, city Feldkirchen, district Feldkirchen, Carinthia, Austria, EU Deutsch: Nymphenbrunnen und Rathaus am Hauptplatz, Stadt Feldkirchen, Bezirk Feldkirchen, Kärnten, Österreich, EU &#160; This media shows the protected monument with the number 61613 in Austria. (Commons, de, Wikidata) &#160; This media shows the protected monument with the number 94119 in Austria. (Commons, de, Wikidata)
context_page_description: In the Republic of Austria, the municipality is the administrative division encompassing a single village, town, or city.
  The municipality has corporate status and local self-government on the basis of parliamentary-style representative democracy: a municipal council elected through a form of party-list system enacts municipal laws, a municipal executive board and a mayor appointed by the council are in charge of municipal administration. Austria is currently partitioned into 2,098 municipalities, ranging in population from about fifty to almost two million. There is no unincorporated territory in Austria.
context_section_description: Larger municipalities are typically granted city status (Stadtrecht). The distinction, while important in medieval and early modern times, is purely symbolic today. City status does not currently confer any additional legal responsibilities.
  There exists a number of cities that are barely more than villages at present and that are labelled cities merely because they used to be regional population centers in the distant past. The city of Rattenberg, for example, has a population of about 400. The city of Hardegg has about 1200 inhabitants, although the historic city core − Hardegg proper without what used to be the surrounding hamlets − is home to just 80 souls.
  Constitutionally, the main difference between municipalities that are cities (Städte, sing. Stadt) and municipalities that are not is that in cities, the municipal executive board is called not a Gemeindevorstand but a Stadtrat (B-VG 117 (1)).
  A similar distinction, meaningful in the past but symbolic today, is that of market town (Marktgemeinde).
  Cities that are economic and administrative centers of wider geographic reach can be elevated to statutory city status.
  A statutory city (Stadt mit eigenem Statut or Statutarstadt) is vested, in addition to its purview as a municipality, with the duties of a district administrative authority. The status does not come with any additional political autonomy: district administrative authorities are essentially just service centers that citizens use to interact with the national government, for example to apply for driver licenses or passports. The national government generally uses the provinces to run these points of contact on its behalf; in the case of statutory cities, the municipality gets to step up.
  Just like Austria has a number of villages that are nominally cities because they used to be significant in the past, Austria has a number of minor towns that hold statutory city status because they used to be regional capitals a few centuries ago. Examples include Waidhofen an der Ybbs, population ca. 11,000, or Rust, population ca. 1900. A municipality that desires statutory city status today needs to have at least 20,000 inhabitants. (B-VG 116 (3))
  The municipal executive board of a statutory city is called a city senate (Stadtsenat). (B-VG 117 (1))
  Informally, municipalities that are neither cities nor market towns are sometimes called Landgemeinden, lit. "rural municipalities".
caption: City hall of Feldkirchen, Carinthia, population ca. 14,000, the capital of Feldkirchen District
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