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Local Law Explorer · field notes

What's actually in your local laws?

Cities and counties govern far more of daily life than you would think: your dog, your chickens, your music, your fireworks. Here is what is in the codebooks, where towns agree, and where they part ways.

01 — The breadth

Your town has a law about that

Across 1,652 city codes, the share with a rule on each subject. Tap a row for example towns, then open a town to read its version.

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02 — Patterns of approaches

Same problem, different playbook

Towns rarely improvise. They pick from a small menu of approaches. Choose a topic, then an approach, to read the real ordinances.

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03 — Regional variation

The rules change at the state line

Whether a town regulates something often depends on the region, not the town: climate, state preemption, local culture. Pick a subject to see where the rule is common, and why.

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How to read this. “Regulates X” means a town has a law whose title mentions X, which undercounts. Labels and scores are machine estimates, text is OCR'd, and plain-language versions are AI paraphrases. Not legal advice, and not the law. Data: LOCUS-v1 (CC BY-NC 4.0).