On Wed, 3 Dec 2008, Sam Couter wrote: > Population count is reality, and it's objective and hard to argue with.
Not exactly, its a moving target, and subject to collection errors. I've had one of those quick looks with my usual search engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town#Australia In Australia, the status of a town is formally applied in only a few states. Most states do define cities, and towns are commonly understood to be those centres of population not formally declared to be cities and usually with a population in excess of about 250 people. http://www.dictionary.net/village Village \Vil"lage\ (?; 48), n. [F., fr. L. villaticus belonging to a country house or villa. See Villa, and cf. Villatic.] A small assemblage of houses in the country, less than a town or city. Village cart, a kind of two-wheeled pleasure carriage without a top. Syn: Village, Hamlet, Town, City. Usage: In England, a hamlet denotes a collection of houses, too small to have a parish church. A village has a church, but no market. A town has both a market and a church or churches. A city is, in the legal sense, an incorporated borough town, which is, or has been, the place of a bishop's see. In the United States these distinctions do not hold. Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070915103226AALZGhW What is the difference between a village, town, and city? The place I live considers itself a village. It's not under populated or that highly populated. There are about 35,000 people here. What determines if it is a town, village, or city? Best Answer - Chosen by Asker Population for each actually varries depending on where you are. Here is some information that might help. A hamlet is a small settlement, too small to be considered a village. The name comes from the diminutive of a Germanic word for an enclosed piece of land or pasture. A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet, A town is a community of people ranging from a few hundred to several thousands, although it may be applied loosely even to huge metropolitan areas. Usually, a "town" is thought of as larger than a village but smaller than a "city". The words "city" and "village" came into English from Latin via French. "Town" and "borough" (also "burrow", "burgh", "bury", etc.) are of native Germanic origin, from Old English burg, a fortified settlement, and tūn, an enclosed piece of land A city is an urban settlement with a particularly important status which differentiates it from a town. City is primarily used to designate an urban settlement with a large population. However, city may also indicate a special administrative, legal, or historical status. In the United States, "city" is primarily a legal term meaning an urban area with a degree of autonomy (i.e. a township), rather than meaning an entire large settlement (metropolitan area). Outside the United States, "city" implies an entire settlement or metropolitan area, although there are notable exceptions, e.g. the term City of London. In the UK, a city is a settlement with a charter ("letters patent") from the crown. http://www.npsp.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=1360 mentions "Kent Town Village" in the City of Norwood Payneham & St Peters http://phorums.com.au/showthread.php?t=193110 wHAT THE............?!??! The smallest city/town/village/hamlet in the world ?!?!?!? discusses some of the very small towns and villages. The problem exists because the Poms have one set of definitions and we don't have identical definitions in the remainder of (or the majority of) the English-speaking world. The English definitions of place_with_no_church=hamlet place_with_church_and_no_market=village place_with_church_and_market=town place_with_cathedral=city should be replaced with place_you_cannot_find=locality place_with_no_pub=hamlet place_with_pub_or_store=village place_with_supermarket=town place_with_shopping_centre_malls_and_maccas=city that would be a lot easier to map than trying to count the population. _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au