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Urban secession is a city's secession from its surrounding region to form a new political unit.
This new unit is usually a subdivision of the same country as its surroundings. Many cities around the world form a separate local government unit. The most common reason is that the population of the city is too large for the city to be subsumed into a larger local government unit.
However, in a few cases, full sovereignty may be attained, in which case the unit is usually called a city-state. It is an extreme form of urban autonomy, which can be expressed in less formal terms or by ordinary legislation such as a city charter.
Secession (the setup of entirely new legislative and executive entities) is advocated by certain urban theorists, notably Jane Jacobs, as the only way to deal politically with these vast differences in culture between modern cities and even their nearest suburbs and essential watersheds. She stated that "cities that wish to thrive in the next century must separate politically from their surrounding regions." She rejected the lesser "Charter" and less formal solutions, arguing the full structure of real regional government were necessary, and applied to the urban area alone. In particular she rejected the idea that suburban regions should have any say over the rules in the city: "they have left it, and aren't part of it." Jacobs herself lived in an urban neighborhood (The Annex, Toronto) which would have been paved over in the 1970s by a highway project to serve the suburbs, the Spadina Expressway, had the proponents of urban secession not stopped it. Jacobs likewise took part in blocking the development of the Lower Manhattan Expressway in the 1960s, opposing Robert Moses. These freeways are examples of the clash of urban community versus suburban market interests.
Advocates of highway development and suburban participation in urban government theorize that cities which protect themselves from the suburbs, forcing them to become self-sufficient small towns, cutting off the freeways, forcing commuting into subways, etc., are committing suicide by forcing business out into the suburbs. Advocates respond that cities depend more on their quality of life to attract migrants and professionals, and that remote work makes it possible for workers in the city to live anywhere, coming into town less frequently, without the rush.
Certain cities like Hong Kong and Macao have a degree of autonomy, but not full political independence. Specifically, the status of a special administrative regions (SAR) has been conferred upon Hong Kong and Macau in the People's Republic of China. The reason for their relative autonomy stems from their existence for more than a century as European colonies, and a resultant difficulty of full reintegration.
In Japan, Tokyo, as well as being a city, forms a prefecture, falling into a special category of "metropolitan prefecture" having some of the attributes of Tokyo City and some of a prefecture. Within Tokyo, there are smaller units, "wards", "cities", "towns", etc., but some of the responsibilities normally assigned to cities and towns in other Japanese prefectures are handled by the Tokyo metropolitan government instead.
In both South Korea and North Korea, special cities are independent from their surrounding provinces and city-states under direct governance from the central government. Examples are Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Incheon, Gwangju, Daejeon and Ulsan in South Korea and Pyongyang and Rason in North Korea. In South Korea, the main criterion for granting secession from the province is a population reaching one million.
Taiwan, officially the Taiwan, administers six cities, formerly part of the Taiwan Province, as special municipalities: Kaohsiung, Taichung, Tainan, Taipei, New Taipei and Taoyuan. (The People's Republic of China, which claims Taiwan, continues to recognise these municipalities as an integral part of PRC's purported Taiwan Province; the People's Republic of China regards Taiwan as its 23rd province, with Taipei as its capital.)
In Indonesia, the capital Jakarta was once part of West Java until it gained special autonomy status and broke away from its former province in 1961. The mayor position was replaced by governor, making it special autonomous province and operates independently from its surrounding provinces
Malaysia capitals Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya as well as Labuan island was once part of Selangor and Sabah respectively. In 1974 Kuala Lumpur was declared as first Federal Territory in Malaysia in order to prevent clash between Selangor state government and federal government, the state capital of Selangor was later moved to nearby Shah Alam. Later in 1984 Labuan was chosen by the federal government for the development Offshore financial centre and declared as second Federal Territory after Kuala Lumpur. Putrajaya declared as third Federal Territory later in 2001 after federal government finished developing the city as new federal capital while Kuala Lumpur stays as royal capital.
In Thailand, the capital Bangkok operates independently of any province and is considered a special administrative area. It is a primate city in terms of its large population, having nearly 8% of Thailand's total population.
In Bulgaria the capital Sofia is an oblast of its own - Sofia-grad, while the surrounding area is divided between the Pernik Province and the Sofia Province.
Madrid has its own autonomous region, including a regional parliament even though Spain is a unitary state.
Paris and the Lyon Metropolis are their own departments in France.
The capital city of Bucharest is also a county within Romania.
Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the biggest cities in Russia, have a federal city status. Following the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, the city of Sevastopol is also administered as a federal city, though Ukraine and most of the UN member countries continue to regard Sevastopol as a city with special status within Ukraine.
In the United Kingdom, London secessionism has gathered momentum following the Brexit referendum, when the UK as a whole voted to leave the European Union, but Greater London, which is its own region (unlike other urban areas in the UK), voted to remain in the EU.
The city of Vienna is a federal state within the Republic of Austria. As in Germany, many large and medium-sized cities in Austria are separate from the regular districts, instead forming their own statutory cities (German: Statutarstädte).
One of the cantons of Switzerland, Basel-Stadt, is a city-state.
In Quebec, with a secessionist movement and linguistic dichotomy, the division of a newly independent Quebec has been a strong undercurrent, with some having a Province of Montreal remaining in Canada, sometimes containing only the West Island and the West Shore of Montreal.
For many decades, the urban communities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver have been configured separately from their respective provinces, for purposes of apportioning Members of Parliament after the national censuses conducted every five years.
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