“The simplest type of urban county is that in which the geographical limits of the two local units are identical and the population has grown up out of a single well-defined historical nucleus. Among other communities there would fall within this classification the cities of Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco and Baltimore and eighteen cities in Virginia. “A second type is that in which a single city furnishes an overwhelming proportion of the population, but occupies a relatively small part of an otherwise rural territory. Among the cities which fall in this classification are Buffalo, Milwaukee and Cleveland. “The third type is that in which a city of predominating size and importance is surrounded by a number of smaller but vigorous municipalities which have grown up not as suburbs of the main city, but out of independent historical beginnings. Cases in point are the two largest counties of New Jersey, Hudson and Essex. “A fourth type is one which contains several strong municipalities, no one of which has achieved a position of undisputed leadership. Alameda County, Cal., which contains the cities of Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley will serve to illustrate. “The most advanced type of the city-county problem involves the adjustment of the political to the physical and social unity of a great urban area, regardless of established boundaries of either cities or counties. The metropolitan districts of New York and Massachusetts are the most conspicuous illustrations of this problem.” The key to reconstruction is the same in every case: simplification. Eliminate duplication of civil divisions; substitute one government for two or many (in the case of Chicago, twenty-two!). There is a good deal of _logic_ in a separate local government to serve as a state agency. But everywhere the people have waived the right or privilege of a logical government when they have illogically insisted upon selecting their officers locally. When the district attorney, for instance, is chosen by the electors of the county he may be legally the state’s representative but he is _practically_ a local officer in very much the same sense as the mayor. Then why, for legal fiction’s sake, distinguish between the city and the county? One American city-county has not only seen the inefficiency and hypocrisy of the dual system but has actually wiped out the last semblance of distinction between the two divisions. The story is told in legal form in Article XX of the Colorado constitution: