Unincorporated area
An unincorporated community is one general term for a geographic area having a common social identity without municipal organization or official political designation (i.e., incorporation as a city or town). There are two main types of unincorporated communities:Due to differences in state laws regarding the incorporation of communities, there is a great variation in the distribution and nature of unincorporated areas. Unincorporated regions are essentially nonexistent in seven of the northeastern states. All of the land in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island, and nearly all of the land in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Vermont, is part of an incorporated area of some type. In these areas, types (and official names) of local government entities can vary. In New England (which includes five of those eight states, plus the less fully incorporated state of Maine), local municipalities are known as towns or cities, and most towns are administered by a form of direct democracy, such as the open town meeting or representative town meeting. Larger towns in New England may be incorporated as cities, with some form of mayor-council government. In New Jersey multiple types exist as well, such as city, township, town, borough, or village, but these differences are in the structure of the legislative branches, not in the powers or functions of the entities themselves.
Art commune
An art commune is a communal living situation or commune where collective art is produced as a function of the group's activities. Contemporary art communes such as Kunsthaus Tacheles and Flux Factory are scattered around the world, yet frequently aloof to widespread attention due to displeasure or discomfort with mainstream society. In the 1960s and 1970s art communes such as Friedrichshof also known as Aktionsanalytische Organisation flourished. Creative art was enthusiastically produced within such groups, which became gathering points for the counterculture movement. Although from a sociological viewpoint both the art producing and non-art producing communes of the 1970s failed to sustain themselves, owing largely to the fact that they tended to have open memberships, which eventually attracted people with social problems. These problems then spread and become too difficult for these autonomous entities to handle. Some groups however, such as the Twin Oaks Community have continued to flourish to this day.