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, cities and/or towns:
“At sundown, leaving the river road awhile for shortness, we went by way of Enfield, where we stopped for the night. This, like most of the localities bearing names on this road, was a place to name which, in the midst of the unnamed and unincorporated wilderness, was to make a distinction without a difference, it seemed to me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Beyond the horizon, or even the knowledge, of the cities along the coast, a great, creative impulse is at work—the only thing, after all, that gives this continent meaning and a guarantee of the future. Every Australian ought to climb up here, once in a way, and glimpse the various, manifold life of which he is a part.”
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959)
“The poor in bustling towns aren’t called upon, but the rich deep in the mountains have relatives visiting them from afar.”
—Chinese proverb.