# When do towns become cities?



## dars-dm (Oct 13, 2007)

I'm curious what can make a town turn into a city. Is the number of residents the border between towns and cities? Or cities should have some special purpose buildings?


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## Arbeloa (Feb 6, 2014)

Population, urban development, facilities, transportation, political importance.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

300,000? 500,000?


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## Blandine Forberg (Jan 15, 2014)

According to German norms or even laws, exceeding the mark of 100.000 inhabitants makes a settlement qualify as Großstadt (city).


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## Airman Kris™ (Feb 22, 2014)

10,000 plus in the States.


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## gehenaus (Jan 30, 2013)

In the UK to become a city, a settlement had to have a cathedral. This means that St.Davids in Wales with a population of around 2,000 people is a city.
Nowadays though I think the queen just dishes out city status to some places every now and again.


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## Svartmetall (Aug 5, 2007)

^^ An Anglican cathedral, not just any cathedral. Northampton has a Catholic cathedral but cannot be classed as a city as it lacks an Anglican one...


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## alexandru.mircea (May 18, 2011)

In some countries there are official designations that follow certain criteria, myself I've always used the two words based on my own subjective set of criteria - a city would need to offer the opportunity to pursue university studies, to host a few permanent cultural institutions like a theatre company, museums, galleries or orchestra, to have entertainment venues, to be a transport node, to have all the public institution necessary so that you don't need to go to the nearest city to get your papers, etc. 

I come from an Eastern European town pushing 90k in population at its best, but was lacking most of these, so I was kinda shocked when starting to use SSC and noticing how small a city could be that the users would refer to it as a "city". But traveling around Western Europe I realized that it's not for nothing, in France for example which doesn't have many large cities a city can start fulfilling my criteria from 20k already, which I would have considered ridiculous initially.

As a side note, I love it how Americans refer to their amazing cities as "towns", what's that down to? Is it a legacy of the times in the 17th-18th centuries when they were still small?


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## Yuri S Andrade (Sep 29, 2008)

In Brazil, there's no such distinction. Municipalities and cities are used interchangeably. There are 5,600 municipalities/cities in Brazil and the least populated is Borá, with 800 inhabitants. 

Inside one municipality there might be more than one urban cluster. The municipality and the main one share the same name. The others are usually less than 1,000 inhabitants and are called "districts" of that municipality.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

Here in The Philippines, there are many so called "cities" where in fact they are town both in population and cityscape.

San Pedro, Laguna south of Metro Manila has earned cityhood. But is actually a suburban town.


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## woutero (Jan 14, 2008)

It also depends on language. In Dutch there are only two words: Stad (city) and dorp (village). There's no word for town.

The way they are used is part historic, part to do with size. 

A stad / city is:
- A settlement with historic (medieval) city rights
- A settlement with over about 50.000 inhabitants is usually called a city, also if it lacks these historic rights.

A dorp / village is:
- Anything else

For instance: Sloten in Friesland (760 inh) is a stad (city), or usually called stadje (small city), while nearby Heerenveen (30.000 inh) is a dorp (village).


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## WeimieLvr (May 26, 2008)

There is no specific designation for "city" or "town" in the U.S. I guess if a municipality of 2,500 wants to be called a city, then so be it.


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## Chicagoago (Dec 2, 2005)

When it turns 18 years old.


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## Xtreminal (Mar 8, 2008)

In Azerbaijan, Parliament only can turn town to cities. It happens not often


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## MrAronymous (Aug 7, 2011)

woutero said:


> It also depends on language. In Dutch there are only two words: Stad (city) and dorp (village). There's no word for town.
> 
> The way they are used is part historic, part to do with size.
> 
> ...


Funny thing though, that our constitition got rid of all the official city rights. It only states Amsterdam is the capital city. So technically Amsterdam qualifies as the only city. :lol:


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## julesstoop (Sep 11, 2002)

woutero said:


> It also depends on language. In Dutch there are only two words: Stad (city) and dorp (village). There's no word for town.
> 
> The way they are used is part historic, part to do with size.
> 
> ...


As far as I'm concerned the Netherlands has four, maybe five proper cities. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Eindhoven. 

The Dutch cities in the second league (between about 70.000 and 200.000 inhabitants) are often referred to as 'middelgrote stad' or 'provinciestad' in Dutch (and in the Dutch context) [unless they're suburban municipalities in a larger urban area; in which case we call them 'voorstad' or 'randgemeente' (suburb)]. In English - and placed in an international context - I'd refer to places in this second league as small cities and large towns. Places like Maastricht, Groningen, Leiden, Delft, Zwolle, Gouda, etc. fall in this category. 

Then there are many smaller towns with some degree of sufficiency. They have a market, a proper high street, secondary education, sports facilities, some industry and/or offices, often a rich history, etc.. These are typically places with at least 15.000 inhabitants. Historically most of these places are villages, some are new towns and some are old (former) cities. A Dutch word for these in-between large village/towns is 'vlek' but you don't hear that too often. I'd call Heerenveen a typical example of this category.


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## memph (Dec 11, 2010)

One thing I associate with cities around here is if there's pedestrian (ie sidewalk) oriented retail outside of the downtown. In Ontario, cities that meet this criteria include Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Windsor and London. Maybe Brantford too, but if so, barely.


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## Airman Kris™ (Feb 22, 2014)

memph said:


> One thing I associate with cities around here is if there's pedestrian (ie sidewalk) oriented retail outside of the downtown. In Ontario, cities that meet this criteria include Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Windsor and London. Maybe Brantford too, but if so, barely.


Essentially several suburban strip-malls then ? You could argue that many "communities" under 15,000 residents have those, but in general I can agree with you. I tend to just go by 15,000.


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## Svartmetall (Aug 5, 2007)

Airman Kris™ said:


> Essentially several suburban strip-malls then ? You could argue that many "communities" under 15,000 residents have those, but in general I can agree with you. I tend to just go by 15,000.


Hm, no I think he means more high street style shopping rather than strip mall.


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## Airman Kris™ (Feb 22, 2014)

Svartmetall said:


> Hm, no I think he means more high street style shopping rather than strip mall.


Ahh..I can see that contributing to a community being defined as a city. I believe that if you do not want to attribute population to the definition, any community which has _some_ sort of public transportation (Except private taxi companies) should be considered a city.


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