Town
In American English, a town is usually a municipal corporation that is smaller than a city but larger than a village. In some cases, "town" is an alternate name for "city" or "village" (especially a larger village). Sometimes, the word "town" is short for "township."
In short, there is no universal, standard definition of the word. This is mostly due to the evolution of the English language as an amalgamation of words from many other languages. "City" and "village" came into English from Latin via French. "Town" and "borough" (also "burrow," "burgh," "bury," etc.) are native English and Scottish words.
In Old English and Old Scots, "Town" (or "toun," "ton," etc.) originally meant a fortified municipality, whereas a borough was not fortified. But that distinction did not last long, and "Edina Burgh" or "Edinburgh" - modernly called a "city" - was a fortified "town" from its founding.
For example, in California (where the term "village" is not used), "town" is simply another word for "city" (especially a "general law city", as distinct from a "charter city"). In New York, "town" is essentially short for "township." Across the pond in England, the only difference between a "city" and a "town" is usually (though not always) the fact that a city has a cathedral church whereas a town has an ordinary church. Thus, within Greater London, there are two cities, each with its own cathedral - the City of London (St. Paul's Cathedral; Anglican) and the City of Westminster (Westminster Cathedral; Roman Catholic - but Westminster Abbey is Anglican); while Camden, which has an ordinary parish church, is Camden Town as opposed to Camden City.
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Various meanings
The word town can also be used as a general term for urban areas, including cities. In this usage, a city is a type of town — a large one, with a certain status. For example, London is a city, but is sometimes referred to as "London town" (the "City of London" is the nucleus informally known as the "Square Mile"). Also, going from the suburbs to central London is to "go into town".
In general, towns can be differentiated from townships, villages, or hamlets on the basis of their economic character, in that most of a town's population will tend to derive their living from manufacturing industry, commerce, and public service rather than primary industry such as agriculture or related activities.
A place's population size is not a reliable determinant of urban character. In many areas of the world, as in India at least until recent times, a large village might contain several times as many people as a small town.
The modern phenomena of extensive suburban growth, satellite urban development, and migration of city-dwellers to villages have further complicated the definition of towns, creating communities urban in their economic and cultural characteristics but lacking other characteristics of urban localities.
Some forms of non-rural settlement, such as temporary mining locations, may be clearly non-rural, but have at best a questionable claim to be called a town.
The distinction between a town and a city similarly depends on the approach adopted: a city may strictly be an administrative entity which has been granted that designation by law, but in informal usage, the term is also used to denote an urban locality of a particular size or importance: whereas a medieval city may have possessed as few as 10,000 inhabitants, today some consider an urban place of fewer than 100,000 as a town, even though there are many officially designated cities that are very much smaller than that.
England and Wales
In England and Wales, the status of a city is reserved for places that have a Royal Charter entitling them to the name, traditionally associated with the possession of a cathedral. Some large municipalities are legally boroughs but not cities, whereas some cities are quite small — St. David's for instance.
It is often thought that towns with bishops' seats rank automatically as cities: however, Chelmsford remains a town despite being the seat of the Diocese of Chelmsford. St. Asaph, which is the seat of the Diocese of St. Asaph, is another such town.
Historically, a town was generally distinguished from a village by having a regular market or fair. Not all towns were boroughs. There are some English villages (e.g. Kidlington, Oxfordshire) larger than some small towns (e.g. Middleham, North Yorkshire).
Germany
Germans do not differentiate between city and town. The German word for both is "Stadt" as it is in many other languages that do not make any difference between the Anglo-Saxon concepts. A town with more than 100.000 inhabitants is called a Großstadt, which is the most adequate equivalence for city.
The United States
In the United States of America, the meaning of the term town varies from state to state. In some states, a town is an incorporated municipality, that is, one with a charter received from the state, similar to a city.
Typically, municipalities are classed as cities, towns, or villages in decreasing order of size, although not all states have all three. Many states do not use the term "town" for incorporated municipalities. In some states, for example Wisconsin, "town" is used in the same way that civil township is used in elsewhere. In other states, such as Michigan, the term "town" has no official meaning and is simply used informally to refer to a populated place, whether incorporated or not.
In the six New England states, a town is a municipality, and in these states, in practice a more important unit than the county. In Connecticut and Rhode Island, in fact, counties only exist as map divisions and have no legal functions; in the other four states, counties are primarily judicial districts, with other functions primarily in New Hampshire and Vermont. In all six, towns perform functions that in most states would be county functions. The defining feature of a New England town, as opposed to a city, is that a town meeting and a board of selectmen serve as the main form of government for a town, while cities are run by a mayor and a city council. For example, Brookline, Massachusetts is a town, even though it is fairly urban, because of its form of government.
In New York, a town is similarly a subdivision of the county, but with less importance than in New England. Of some importance is the fact that, in New York, a town provides a closer level of governance than its enclosing county, providing almost all municipal services to unincorporated areas, called hamlets and selected services to incorporated areas, called villages. In New York, a town typically contains a number of such hamlets and villages. However, due to the independent nature of Incorporated Villages, they may exist in two towns or even two counties. Everyone in New York State who does not live in an Indian reservation or a city lives in a town and possibly in one of the town's hamlets or villages. (Some other states have similar entities called townships.)
In Virginia, a town is similar to a city (though with a smaller required minimum population), but while cities are by Virginia law independent of counties, towns are contained in a county. Virginia, like many other states, has both incorporated towns and unincorporated towns. Unincorporated municipalities (whether cities, towns, villages, etc.), however, are not legally recognised as municipal corporations -- since they are not incorporated.
See also
External links
- Open-Site Regional — Contains information about towns in numerous countries.
| Subnational entity | ||
|---|---|---|
| Banner | Borough | Canton | Circuit | City | Commune | County | Council | Department | District | Division | Dominion | Duchy | Governorate | Hamlet | Municipality | Neighbourhood | Parish | Prefecture | Province | Region | Republic | State | Territory | Town | Township | Village | Voivodship | Community | ||
| Autonomous: | banner | city | community | county | prefecture | province | region | republic | ward | |
| Civil: | parish | township | |
| Federal: | capital | district | capital district | capital territory | |
| Local: | council | |
| Metropolitan: | borough | county | |
| National: | capital district | capital territory | |
| Rural: | council | district | municipality | |
| Urban: | district | |
| edit | See also: List of terms for subnational entities, List of subnational entities, Matrix of subnational entities | |