[talk-au] place=?

Liz edodd at billiau.net
Wed Dec 3 10:11:31 GMT 2008


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.




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