Distinction Between Cities and Towns
There are probably as many different ways of conceiving what a city is as there are cities. A simple definition therefore has its attractions. The simplest is that a city is a human settlement in which strangers are likely to meet.
Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, 1977, p. 39.The difference between towns and cities is differently understood in different parts of the world. Indeed, some languages other than English use a single word for both concepts. Iberian languages typically use a three-way designation (Catalan: “poble”, “vila”, “ciutat”; Galician: “aldea”, “vila”, “cidade”; Portuguese: “aldeia”, “vila”, “cidade”; Spanish: “pueblo”, “villa”, “ciudad”—respectively “village”, “town”, “city”); Italian: “villaggio”, "paese" “città”—respectively “village”, "village/town", “city/town”;, but other Romance languages don’t (French: “village”, “ville”).
Even within the English-speaking world there is no one standard definition of a city: the term may be used either for a town possessing city status; for an urban locality exceeding an arbitrary population size; for a town dominating other towns with particular regional economic or administrative significance. In England, city is reserved for very large settlements and smaller historic settlements with a Cathedral (e.g. Lichfield), while smaller settlements without a Cathedral are called towns, and smaller still are villages and hamlets. In the US city is used for much smaller settlements.
Although city can refer to an agglomeration including suburban and satellite areas, the term is not usually applied to a conurbation (cluster) of distinct urban places, nor for a wider metropolitan area including more than one city, each acting as a focus for parts of the area. And the word "town" (also "downtown") may mean the center of the city.
Read more about this topic: City
Famous quotes containing the words distinction between, distinction, cities and/or towns:
“... the structure of our public morality crashed to earth. Above its grave a tombstone read, “Be tolerant—even of evil.” Logically the next step would be to say to our commonwealth’s criminals, “I disagree that it’s all right to rob and murder, but naturally I respect your opinion.” Tolerance is only complacence when it makes no distinction between right and wrong.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 2 (1962)
“The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.”
—Don Barthelme (1931–1989)
“I keep having the same experience and keep resisting it every time. I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lacks an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Glorious, stirring sight! The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here today—in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped—always somebody else’s horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!”
—Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932)