It was then that Greenbriar, under a newly organized government seat under Brooklyn Township, began attending to its own governmental needs.

[4] Self-government started to gain in popularity by the time the new Greenbriar settlement contained twenty householders.

They met at the Samuel Freeman House on April 3, 1826, to elect township officers according to the law.

The first schoolhouse was a log structure built on the hill at the northern corner of what is now Parma Heights Cemetery.

The house rests on one of the higher points in Cuyahoga County, which provided visibility for the entire northeastern part of Parma Township.

This was also the same site where the Erie Indians, centuries before, stood to read and send fire signals as well as pray to their spirits.

[12][13] A resident of Shaker Heights, Ohio's first Garden City, H. A. Stahl developed Ridgewood as an ambitious "model village" project patterned along the lines of and rivaling the earlier Shaker Heights project with "churches, schools, motion picture theater, community house, and other features forming a part of all well-developed residence communities".

[14][15] Ridgewood was designed and marketed as a Garden City on 1,000 acres of land to accommodate about 40,000 residents "325 feet above Lake Erie, in the healthiest section of the South Side, free from the smoke of industries, or the congestion and noises of sections nearer the Public Square.

[18] Money was scarce, tax income was limited, and some began to talk of annexation of both the city and school district to Cleveland.

[21] By 1941, a building boom appeared to be underway in Parma just as the United States was about to enter World War II.

[24] In 2016, Parma's population had declined to 81,601, though it remains one of the Cleveland area's top three destinations young adults (aged 22 to 34) are increasingly choosing as a place to live, along with Lakewood and downtown Cleveland[25] and in 2016 was recognized by Businessweek as one of the best places to raise kids in Ohio.

In 2013, Parma formed a sister-city relationship with Lviv, Ukraine[31] and is home to Ohio's largest Ukrainian community, the majority of whom are foreign born, with more than twice the number of any other city.

This was low in comparison to other large Ohio cities as well as the state's individual poverty rate of 15.4%.

[41][42] In 2014, Parma ranked as the third safest city in the United States with a population of 25,000 or more by Neighborhood Scout.

Since the 1950s, Parma has fostered the growth of many small businesses and been an operating hub for companies including General Motors, Cox Cable, and formerly, the Union Carbide Research Center.

[45] The Shoppes at Parma, formerly Parmatown Mall, is a commercial shopping district that totals approximately 800,000 square feet.

It is located approximately 3 miles south of Cleveland's southern border at the southwest corner of Ridge Road and West Ridgewood Drive in central Cuyahoga County.

[46] The Ukrainian Village commercial district is located along State Road between Tuxedo Avenue and Grantwood Drive.

[60] In the late 1980s, Bob McGuire penned a song entitled "Moon Over Parma", about an eccentric courtship that traverses the various suburbs of Cleveland.

The song first received wide exposure on Big Chuck and Lil' John during its "New Talent Time" segment.

[65] Occasionally, during the 1960s and 1970s, Parma was the target of light-hearted jabs by local movie show hosts Ghoulardi, Hoolihan, Big Chuck and Lil’ John, and The Ghoul, due to its central European image promoted by the friendly rivalry between Ernie "Ghoulardi" Anderson and "Big Chuck" Schodowski and contrary to actual demographics.

Ghoulardi, the horror host of late night Shock Theater at WJW-TV, Channel 8, in Cleveland from January 13, 1963, through December 16, 1966, made a series of shorts called "Parma Place" and focused on an alleged love of white socks, pink flamingos, chrome balls, kielbasa, pierogi and the polka.

[66] In March 2016, Anthony Novak, a resident of Parma, created a parody Facebook page superficially resembling the local police department's official page, with outlandish, satirical posts easily distinguished from actual police public-affairs content.