definition
strict definition
non-municipalized area
A Colombian territory that is administered by its department because it has no municipality of its own.
A non-municipalized area is a part of a Colombian department that was never constituted as a municipality. The department administers it directly.
These lie almost entirely in the sparsely settled departments of the Amazon and the eastern plains. DANE gives each a code in the same series as municipalities and marks it as a different kind of unit, so a code alone does not tell the two apart.
It sits where a municipality would sit in the hierarchy, which is why it belongs at the city tier despite not being one.