Town
A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city.
The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative status, or historical significance. In some regions, towns are formally defined by legal charters or government designations, while in others, the term is used informally. Towns typically feature centralized services, infrastructure, and governance, such as municipal authorities, and serve as hubs for commerce, education, and cultural activities within their regions.
The concept of a town varies culturally and legally. For example, in the United Kingdom, a town may historically derive its status from a market town designation or royal charter, while in the United States, the term is often loosely applied to incorporated municipalities. In some countries, such as Australia and Canada, distinctions between towns, cities, and rural areas are based on population thresholds. Globally, towns play diverse roles, ranging from agricultural service centers to suburban communities within metropolitan areas.
Etymology
The word "town" shares an origin with the German word , the Dutch word , and the Old Norse . The original Proto-Germanic word,, is thought to be an early borrowing from .The original sense of the word in both Germanic and Celtic was that of a fortress or an enclosure. Cognates of the English word town in many modern Germanic languages designate a "fence" or a "hedge". In English and Dutch, the meaning of the word took on the sense of the space which these fences enclosed, and through which a track must run. In England, a "town" was a small community that could not afford or was not allowed to build walls or other larger fortifications, and built a palisade or stockade instead. In the Netherlands, this space was a garden, more specifically those of the wealthy, which had a high fence or a wall around them. In Old Norse tún means a place between farmhouses, and the word is still used with a similar meaning in modern Norwegian.
Old English became a common place-name suffix in England and southeastern Scotland during the Anglo-Saxon settlement period. In Old English and Early and Middle Scots, the words ton, toun, etc. could refer to diverse kinds of settlements from agricultural estates and holdings, partly picking up the Norse sense at one end of the scale, to fortified municipalities. Other common Anglo-Saxon suffixes included ham 'home', stede 'stead', and burh 'bury, borough, burgh'.
In toponymic terminology, names of individual towns and cities are called astyonyms or astionyms.
Meaning
In some cases, town is an alternative name for "city" or "village". Sometimes, the word town is short for township. In general, today 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 services rather than primary sector industries 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, e.g. in India at least until recent times, a large village might contain several times as many people as a small town. In the United Kingdom, there are historical cities that are far smaller than the larger towns.
File:Moisakula - panoramio.jpg|thumb|Mõisaküla is a small town in the southern part of Estonia, just next to the border of Latvia. The town's current population is less than 1,000 inhabitants.
The modern phenomenon of extensive suburban growth, satellite urban development, and migration of city dwellers to villages has 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.
Towns often exist as distinct governmental units, with legally defined borders and some or all of the appurtenances of local government. In the United States these are referred to as "incorporated towns". In other cases the town lacks its own governance and is said to be "unincorporated". The existence of an unincorporated town may be legally set out by other means, e.g. zoning districts. In the case of some planned communities, the town exists legally in the form of covenants on the properties within the town. The United States census identifies many census-designated places by the names of unincorporated towns which lie within them; however, those CDPs typically include rural and suburban areas and even surrounding villages and other towns.
File:View of Mariehamn, 2022.jpg|thumb|Aerial view of Mariehamn, the town in Åland with over 10,000 inhabitants
The distinction between a town and a city similarly depends on the approach: 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 much smaller than that.
Starting in March 2021, the then-193 member states of the United Nations have been involved in an effort led by EU aparatusses to agree on a common statistical definition of cities, towns and rural areas.
Age of towns scheme
Australian geographer Thomas Griffith Taylor proposed a classification of towns based on their age and pattern of land use. He identified five types of towns:- Infantile towns, with no clear zoning
- Juvenile towns, which have developed an area of shops
- Adolescent towns, where factories have started to appear
- Early mature towns, with a separate area of high-class housing
- Mature towns, with defined industrial, commercial and various types of residential area
History
Neolithic
, currently an archaeological site, was considered to be the oldest inhabited town, or proto-city, that existed from around 7100 BC. Inscribed as a World Heritage Site, it remains a depopulated town with a complex of ruins.Roman era
In Roman times, a villa was a rural settlement formed by a main residential building and another series of secondary buildings. It constituted the center from which an agricultural holding was administered. These are sometimes referred to as villa rustica, which consist of modest farmhouses. With the consolidation of large estates during the Roman Empire, the town became the center of large farms.A distinction was created between rustic and urban settlements:
- Country villas, from where the exploitation of resources was directed, slave workers resided, livestock were kept and production was stored.
- Urban villas '', in which the lord resided and which increasingly adopted the architectural and beautification forms typical of urban mansions. When from the first century the great territorial property was divided between the area directly exploited by the lord and that ceded to tenant settlers, urban villas became the centers of the administrative power of the lords, appearing the forms of vassalage typical of feudalism of the fourth century.
By country
Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, a city and a town are both referred to as shār. The capital of each of its 34 provinces may include a major city such as Kabul whose population is over five million people or a town such as Parun, the capital of Nuristan Province, whose population is less than 20,000 people.Albania
In Albania qytezë means 'town', which is very similar to the word for city, although there is no official use of the term for any settlement.In Albanian, qytezë means 'small city' or 'new city', while in ancient times it referred to a small residential center within the walls of a castle.
Australia
In Australia, most rural and regional centres of population can be called towns; many small towns have populations of less than 200. The smallest may be described as townships.In addition, some local government entities are officially styled as towns in Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and formerly also in Victoria.
Austria
The Austrian legal system does not distinguish between villages, towns, and cities. The country is partitioned into 2098 municipalities of fundamentally equal rank. Larger municipalities are designated as market towns or cities, but these distinctions are purely symbolic and do not confer additional legal responsibilities. There is a number of smaller communities that are labelled cities because they used to be regional population centers in the distant past. The city of Rattenberg for example has about 400 inhabitants. The city of Hardegg has about 1200 inhabitants.There are no unincorporated areas.
Of the 201 cities in Austria, 15 are statutory cities. A statutory city is a city that is vested, in addition to its purview as a municipality, with the duties of a district administrative authority. The status does not come with any additional autonomy: district administrative authorities are essentially just service centers that citizens use to interact with the national government, for example to apply for driver licenses or passports. The national government generally uses the provinces to run these points of contact on its behalf; in the case of statutory cities, the municipality gets to step up.