Officially, there are no cities in Finland, only municipalities. Cities were often founded by the crown and later, when Finland got independent, the state now and then granted the status of being a city. In 1995 cities were “abolished”. After that a municipality could declare itself a city, so nowadays one third of all municipalites are cities.

Kouvola was until 2008 a small city. In 2009 it ceased to exist together with five other cities/municipalities (Anjalankoski, Elimäki, Jaala, Kuusankoski & Valkeala) and these merged into the new city (municipality) of Kouvola. The area of “new” Kouvola is now 64 times larger than the area of the old one. The boundary of “new” Kouvola should be tagged with admin_level=8 and the boundaries of those former municipalites with admin_level=9. Borders of villages/suburbs within a municipality are tagged with admin_level=10. Admin_level=9 or 10 borders are hard to get, since they are not shown on the map of National Land Survey of Finland.