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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The town my wife grew up in has 1 traffic light, and it’s of the blinking yellow variety.
Rural town.
Anything with less than 50k is rural
Nobody that actually lives rural would agree with this. 50k is a big town.
As someone from rural Wisconsin, I’d say anything under 5k personally
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
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 village usage is in NY) 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
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.
Low population, low density, lots of farm land, can count the number of houses in a mile stretch of road on your fingers. May have one small commercial area within 15 miles with a dollar general, a gas station and, if you’re lucky, a grocery store. Not nearly enough businesses nearby to employ people even the measly number of people there that isn’t a farmer, so they commute to neighboring towns or counties to find work in factories, possibly dozens of miles away. I basically just described where my sister lives in Tennessee.
I think of a rural town to be an area big enough to have a name but too small to have its own police department (so all law enforcement is done by a sheriff’s office and/or state police).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Villages are quite common in the north eastern US.
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.
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.
We don’t understand villages, you don’t understand football. We’re just different.
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Villages are where peasants live and America doesn’t have peasants, yet
You’re all peasants but lie to yourselves by saying that you’re “middle class” because you can afford groceries.
point stands
Does it tho
yup
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!
