As a non-American, I’m very confused by this. If it’s a town, it’s not rural by definition. Because, you-know, it’s urban.
Also, could we get a definition of town vs small town. Do you not have the concept of a village? (Village in the UK would be a settlement with a population of a couple of thousand, with usually a pub, local shop, maybe a post office and primary school if you’re lucky).
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It doesn’t have cows in it, but you can easily walk to where the cows are.
The town my wife grew up in has 1 traffic light, and it’s of the blinking yellow variety.
Rural town.
The numbers are pretty funky depending on who you ask. City nerd on YouTube has a nice video on it how people view themselves as rural/urban and what city planners think of it.
You have a lot of people that identify as rural even though they live in exurbs (town adjacent to city) and a lot of people that live in remote areas identify as urban people.
I’d personally say that people that live in a urban/metro area are not rural. People who live on a farm 50km from the next population center of 1000 people is definitely rural. Everything between depends on a lot of factors like how big is the village, what is the village close to etc.
American’s rarely use the word “village” - a “town” can be anything from a few thousand people down to almost empty. It’s very subjective - some places that make a proud point of calling themselves “the city of …” are IMO small towns at best. Rural in America means surrounded by a fair amount of countryside, be it farmland or nature. I think most Americans loosely associate “urban” with closely packed tallish buildings,maybe 5-7 stories or more, and mostly wouldn’t agree with you that a “town” is urban by definition. In common speech there’s no clear threshold between large town and small city.
As a non-American, I’m very confused by this. If it’s a town, it’s not rural by definition. Because, you-know, it’s urban.
A rural town is a very small town or populated area within a large rural area. The US is a huge country, with very large swaths of rural areas throughout, especially west of the Mississippi. In these large rural areas are scattered small towns of various sizes (say, less than a hundred to less than a thousand or so people), with long stretches of unpopulated (or very sparsely populated) areas between them. That’s why they’re called rural towns–no one would call them “urban” by any stretch of the imagination. They may have the things you mentioned (a post office and bar/pub/eatery) but not much more. But even if you’re technically in a town, you are still effectively rural, since you’re nowhere near a significant population center with anything like hospitals/doctors, shopping, services, etc., and a car is required to reach them (no public transit and much too far to walk or bike). Look at online maps to get the idea.
As for the word “village”, that’s mostly used in the NE part of the country and tends to have a bit more specific definition. Elsewhere, most of us would just say “town”.
(edit: I was unaware of how prevalent legal village usage is in NY, but here’s my original comment)
I don’t think anyone really uses the term “village” in the NE unless it already exists as the specific name of the municipality or neighborhood (or they’re being cheeky). Maybe I’m too far into the metro-area suburbs, but not one village I know would classify as a village by OP’s definition. I don’t think Americans believe they have villages because they picture 3rd world huts, medieval towns, or eastern European towns with dirt roads.I don’t know about other states, but in upstate New York a village is a legal entity that is a defined area within a town. A town is a subdivision of a county.
In other states, I think they don’t fully subdivide counties. So every person in one of those states either lives in an unincorporated part of a county, or a town/city. Those who live unincorporated are only governed by the county, while those in towns/cities are governed by both town and county.
So in New York there are no unincorporated parts of counties. Everyone lives in a town, which is part of a county. Some people may also live in villages, which are areas in towns.
Edit: for example, the village of Seneca Falls is in the town of Seneca Falls, which is in the county of Romulus.
Alright, I’m fascinated. Ironically, all the villages I know are in NY, but more so NYC/Long Island and the immediate area. I don’t read many signs north of there because the trees look too damn pretty when I visit. I assumed they were legacy names but I’m probably standing corrected
I only know about the existence of villages in NY state because my brother lives in one and had to explain to me what constitutes a village vs. a town–I still don’t really get it! - which is why I said the term may have a more specific definition. So yeah, it may not be a commonly used or understood term even in the NE. In any case, I’m sure it’s used differently here than in the UK, like many things.
We have cities named “Village of St Anthony”. I guess it’s to be quaint
All these fancy answers and I’ll give you a real simple one: sidewalks and paved roads. Does it have fully paved roads and sidewalks? Urban. Does it have that and mostly houses? Suburban. Some/no sidewalks and the roads aren’t all paved or is done poorly? Small town/rural. It’s all about the concrete/asphalt to dirt ratio.
There’s villages, towns and cities.
Cities can have unlimited traffic lights, towns are limited, and villages can have one.
I moved from Orange County CA to the rust belt and there are a lot of former thriving towns around the main city I live in that have since turned to villages. It’s wild because you’ll see intersections that obviously used to have lights that now have stop signs or just nothing
I’ve never once heard an American use the term “village” to describe a municipality, even ironically.
It’s dependent on a given state’s terminology. New York, for example, has villages. They’re municipalities that fall within towns, but collectively offer additional services that the town does not. So I could live in the village of Pomona, in the town of Haverstraw, and I’d need to pay taxes to the village and the town separately.
Americans would likely use the term “small town” over “village” in most of the country.
Also the physical layout of a small town would likely be different and much more car dependent.
I live in ely nv it is the most remote area in the lower 48 states. It is 4 hours from Las Vegas, 5 hours from Salt Lake City, 5.5 hours from Reno, and 4.5 hours from Boise. There are some other towns along the way to each city be ely is basically in the middle of nowhere.
This sounds great to me. What do you do for work? I’m assuming it’s mostly desert down there so not farming.
I work in the mining industry I’ve been doing it for 20 years now it pays good and I live in north eastern Nevada and it’s not really desert it’s kinda mountainous with flat valleys. The towns population is about 4k I was born and raised here. The only really bad thing which I consider big is the deep conservative mindset of pretty much 95% of everyone here.
How do you have internet?
I have Hughesnet it’s not the best to have but the only option is this and Starlink and I’m not giving my money to musk. Supposedly google fiber will be here in a year or so but I’ve been hearing about that since 2020.
Has Google deployed any new Google fiber locations in about 10 years?
I don’t think so honestly idk.
Thanks for sharing that, my dood.
It’s been bugging me for years that many rural ppl didn’t have internet. Nowadays it’s almost a necessity of life. Also, thanks for not giving Musk any money.
Respect 👊🏽
I grew up in a village in Ohio, population around 350, which was pushing the numbers honestly. Around 1000 is a town I think.
A nearby “city” is constantly in and out of city status. They always try to bump the numbers because city status means more funding. They are around 25000 pop.
This is considered dense for an American rural town
“Village” isn’t used anywhere in the USA as far as I know. Places with <500 people call themselves a town usually. Where I’m from in NH (close to these towns), residents call themselves townies. “Small” is kinda just used as a grammatical intensifier in all the cases I’ve heard it used. YMMV in the south or Midwest though.
Villages are quite common in the north eastern US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_(United_States)
The term village is used to describe certain categories of populated areas, either colloquially or legally, in 27 states.
Lots of villages in NH, although I don’t think it’s a legal term. For example, Wakefield NH residents seem to refuse to accept that they have a town. They refer to the legal township as “the villages of Wakefield”, and when asked their residency, will say “I live in the village of Union” (or Sanbornville, etc.) also, there is the village of Milton Mills in the town of Milton, and Gonic in Rochester.
There are villages in NE…I think maybe there aren’t a ton, they have very small populations, and most people don’t live in them, so they don’t know what the difference is.
There definitely are villages throughout the USA, but I lived near some in NE specifically. They do not have their own police or much government…and are significantly smaller than a town.
Most towns are not urban by any standard. I ate dinner over the weekend in a town with a population of 669. It was big enough to have its own restaurant and post office. It was a 30-40 minute drive from any town with a population over 10,000 (and that, just barely).
This is why I was confused. There’s no way that’s a town with so few people (from a UK perspective)
We use the word differently. In the past I think we used it more as you do, because “going to town” had the connotations of going to a big city.
“Town” in American usage can mean anything from a small urban center (like under 10k people) to an incorporated municipality that has only a post office and tons of farms around it.
Basically we don’t say “village” here. So town is the smallest word we have. But it has a big range.
Another consideration might be how far your “town” is from a more major center.
A town with a population of 1000 might not feel that rural if it’s 10 miles down the road from a city of a million.
If the next closest center > 5,000pop is 250 miles away… Perhaps a different story.
I’ve hear it said that in Europe 100km is considered a long distance and in North America 100 years is considered a long time.
To my knowledge, US states may use different terms for municipalities, collections of homesteads, etc. as they wish because of the 10th amendment in the US Constitution, i.e. it’s not explicitly given to the fed government to prescribe the hierarchy. But I’m no expert on this subject, so I could be mistaken.
Depending on the state there may be different formal definitions based on population and incorporation status. In Ohio, we have townships, villages, and cities. In Pennsylvania they have “boroughs” instead of villages. In NY a borough is a subdivision of a city. I don’t think they have the township organizational structure in Vermont. In Maine there are unincorporated territories (usually just numbered).
The role of the county government can vary significantly from state to state too.
The role of the county government can vary significantly from state to state too.
My understanding is that in Virginia the city/town that serves as the county seat is explicitly not a part of the county it’s located in!
Americans tend to describe locations more by density and arrangement rather than population. Kinda similar to how we refer to distances in time rather than distance. In a city you have a LOT within 5 minutes of you at any time. Within a rural town you have… maybe 5 neighbors within that same span of time walking.
A lot of this is going to be subjective and depend on your personal frame of reference, as well as local laws and customs that can vary a lot around the country
In general, in normal casual conversation, most Americans are going to refer to a municipality as a “town” unless they’re in a big city. Legally, that municipality might be considered a city, town, township, borough, home rule municipality, village, etc. but unless it’s a big city we’re probably going to refer to it as a town most of the time
There’s also, in some areas, unincorporated communities that don’t have an actual municipal government, but if there’s a relatively dense area, we might go ahead and refer to that area as a town.
Some parts of the US do have some sort of legal definition for “village,” in others it might be used informally to refer to a small “quaint” town, or part of the town.
There’s also the distinction of, for example, being “in a town” vs “in town” or “downtown”
Most of us who don’t live in a big city would say that we live in a town, meaning the municipality we live in. Somewhat less of us live “in town” meaning something more like the denser, more “urban” parts of town, probably resembling what you think of as a village, and “downtown” would refer to something like the area around the main street or main commercial area where you might find stores, restaurants, bars, etc.
So a “rural town” is basically any sort of town in a rural area. I’m not sure if there’s any sort of a legal definition for a rural town, but in general I’d say that if a town is surrounded by woods and/or farmland and you can’t trace an unbroken path of suburban sprawl from it back to a major city it’s rural.
Some of those rural towns can actually be fairly big and urbanized, but they’re otherwise in a rural area in their own little bubble so we’d still consider it to be a rural town.
As far as town vs “small town” that’s kind of subjective.
The town I grew up in is often referred to as a small town, largely because it’s physically pretty small, almost exactly 1 square mile, but that 1 mile is pretty densely populated, I think the population is around 9-10k people currently, it’s just a couple miles outside of the nearest major city, and pretty well-urbanized itself, connected to several major highways, was once a big manufacturing town but is now pretty gentrified, with a solid handful of 10+ floor office buildings. People from more rural areas probably wouldn’t agree that it’s a “small town” but people from a bit city probably would think so, and for those of us “townies” whose families have lived here for a few generations still feel like it has a small town feel, even if the newer transplants don’t all share that feeling.
The town I currently live in isn’t quite rural, but it’s getting there. I’m towards the edge of the suburbs now, maybe even into the exurbs. The town is physically much larger, but only has about half the population. That small, less dense population makes it still feel kind of small-towny.
Also worth noting, my town doesn’t really have any sort of a “downtown” area, no real main street to go walking around or anything. We have a few businesses and stores and such roughly clustered in the same area, but it’s not a cohesive thing that feels like a “town” or what you might recognize as a “village.” I would normally may this, but if I said I was going “into town” for something, most people around me would probably understand that I’m going to one of our neighboring towns that are a bit more built-up
So some combination of physical size, population, population density, and a curtain je ne sais quoi are what makes a town a small town.
In geography academia, “small town” usually means a place that has a name and between 5000 and 50000 inhabitants. Though I suspect that a large part of the confusion here is that a lot of US towns are very low density and don’t have anything like a center. So those towns are themselves rural in look and feel, regardless of total population.
Very detailed, and that explains a lot, thank you.
There’s a few other weird situations that can come into play too, like mailing addresses, census designated places, neighborhoods, etc.
My town doesn’t have its own post office, so my mail gets handled by the post office in a neighboring town, so my mailing address says that town instead of the municipality I actually live in, so more often than not if I have to give out my address that’s what I’m saying.
I also live in a 'census designated place" basically an area that’s officially recognized as having its own identity. It’s basically just a fancy nickname for my neighborhood, so some people in this area will say that instead of the name of the municipality or the mailing address.
It’s actually pretty rare for anyone to give the name of my municipality when asked for what town they live in unless we’re talking about local politics.
