Ugh it is weird; it is full of unincorporated community and CDP's, yet, people refer to them as cities, even if the area your in is unincorporated and in some places borders a major city, they refer to it as "L Springs" or "Insert place" and gaze at you like your stupid when you point out your outside of the area, which isn't a city to begin with, or if they still refer to it as a the city when your closer to another city in an unincorporated part, same thing
We have well over 100 Counties, more than anyone else except Texas, which is weird too, the average county is smaller, and things can change drastically across one or two medium-large cities, each with different ordinances and taxes unique to the county
It's just weird; it had something to do with voting back in the day, and being an old state, still, it is weird, New York, California, Ohio, all have less counties;
Just a weird vent-ATL seems like St Louis, it's population is technically ~500'000 within City limits, yet the metropolitan area is closer to 5 million, because of 15 f%^*ing counties at the core, and several large cities and unincorporated communities; the CSA basically expands to AL, so slightly larger - like Houston being largest city in Texas, I guess