The Independent city is not unique to Virginia but it is rare. I think
the Baltimore and St. Louis structures were to some extent models for
Virginia's form. They were both in rural dominated states that wanted to
quarantine the urban influence of a large city. Virginia in the first
half of the twentieth century had a similar motivation. There are
clearly certain efficiencies connected to it, one system of local
taxation, clear law enforcement jurisdictions, etc., and, like the
adoption of the council-manager form that went with it, it represented
the employment by Virginia's leadership of the business progressivism of
the 1920s for conservative ends.  Equally clearly, by the second half of
the century, some real problems were flowing from this peculiar form of
local government structure. It would take some historical detective work
to explain why for example in the 1950s did Arlington County, clearly an
urban jurisdiction, remain a county while Warwick County, a place where
dairy cows still grazed in Denbigh, become part of the independent City
of Newport News?

At any rate, the number of independent cities is currently decreasing,
falling I believe from 42 to 41. There is a movement among them to
"devolve" to the status of incorporated town, part of a shared
jurisdiction with the surrounding county. Leesburg, for example, with a
population of 30,000, larger than at least a third of the existing
independent cities, has no inclination to gain independent status. Could
it be time, as we enter the 21st century, to revamp our whole structure
of local government? That's for the people to decide--I'm just an
historician.

Jim Hershman
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