How big is a town? How small are cities?

[Timsup2nothin]

Because if Pendleton wasn't there it'd likely be continuous conurbation. It's already not far off continuous, up the 15.

Being slightly facetious, because after two years in SD I know how much not being LA means to them.

As has already been pointed out, continuous urbanization along the transit corridor doesn't make for a single city. If it did I suspect Baltimore and Boston and everything in between would qualify. But they don't.

 

[Arwon]

Yeah, I keep pushing the labour market/commute based, census-derived metropolitan area standard for that reason. Makes the most sense and is comparable across countries with different administrative practices.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yeah, I keep pushing the labour market/commute based, census-derived metropolitan area standard for that reason. Makes the most sense and is comparable across countries with different administrative practices.

I'm not sure that I get that. Take my city as an example. We have a high percentage of commuters. A fair number commute into Santa Clarita. Even more commute into Burbank. We probably have some that commute into LA, but not nearly as many, and most of those wouldn't actually say they commute into LA because they commute into parts that are stubbornly attached to maintaining their own name, like San Fernando and Sun Valley and Sherman Oaks. So does that make us "metropolitan Burbank"? Burbank may very well have more people that commute IN from Los Angeles than they have that commute out TO Los Angeles. Should the entire region be called the Burbank Metro Area?

I think this standard is based on a model where you have the industrial center surrounded by a ring of residential suburbs isolating it from "the countryside" and that model is somewhat obsolete in a lot of places...or at least in California.

 

[Kyriakos]

Most cities do have peripheral municipalities. On paper they are towns, but in reality they are tied to the metro, particularly when near enough or where you have a subway and can commute straight to the city.

 

[Silurian]

Should the entire region be called the Burbank Metro Area?
.

Not the Hollyweed Metro Area.
Im sure many people work there.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Hollywood, like Sun Valley or Sherman Oaks, is part of the city of Los Angeles. Burbank, like Long Beach and Palmdale, is a city with its own government even though it is in many ways indistinguishable from any other part of LA.

 

[The_J]

In neither German nor Dutch the word "town" really exists (AFAIK), and "city" has a legal definition.
An inhabitation can call itself a city, when the local lord (so once upon a time...) granted "city rights" to it. This gave the people the rights to erect a wall around it (plus some more stuff like being allowed to hold a market, I think; this could be granted independently too).
This leads to the absurd situation that e.g. neither The Hague or Eindhoven are a "city" (because they never got city rights, because they only got a reasonable size after all lords ceased to exist). But I live in a "city" with 35k people, and where I grew up the next "city" had only 4k. In reality both The Hague and Eindhoven are called a city though, and nobody would reasonably call a village with 4k people a real city.

For real live purposes, I think it a city needs to be above 100k, or the biggest inhabitation in a wider area, which offers some social/administrative/healthcare services.
Nobody would really call a town a city, if it doesn't have some government bureau (e.g. unemployment agency) sitting there, or if there's no hospital or cinema present.

 

[Kyriakos]

4K isn't a village, it is a large village (here we do have a specific term, although it doesn't translate well, ie 'head-village' ala headmaster).
Villages typically have <1000 people.

Maybe a workable account (for a normal size of population/land) would be:

Village: <1000
Large Village: 1000< <5000
Small town ... <10000
Town ... <100000
City >100000

 

[Arwon]

I'm not sure that I get that. Take my city as an example. We have a high percentage of commuters. A fair number commute into Santa Clarita. Even more commute into Burbank. We probably have some that commute into LA, but not nearly as many, and most of those wouldn't actually say they commute into LA because they commute into parts that are stubbornly attached to maintaining their own name, like San Fernando and Sun Valley and Sherman Oaks. So does that make us "metropolitan Burbank"? Burbank may very well have more people that commute IN from Los Angeles than they have that commute out TO Los Angeles. Should the entire region be called the Burbank Metro Area?

I think this standard is based on a model where you have the industrial center surrounded by a ring of residential suburbs isolating it from "the countryside" and that model is somewhat obsolete in a lot of places...or at least in California.

It doesn't really matter what it's named or how people move within it, the point is it'still a single interconnected and integrated area. Can be monocentric or polycentric.

Meanwhile, I found this animation of commuters who work in LA County. Dots are sized by number of people from that residential origin and coloured by county. It's kinda cool.

 

[The_J]

4K isn't a village, it is a large village (here we do have a specific term, although it doesn't translate well, ie 'head-village' ala headmaster).

We just don't have more terms .
In German it's village or city (disregarding municipality), all other terms do not exist or are not in common use (don't think anyone e.g. uses in normal day to day speech the German words for hamlet or so).
Wiki says that within the cities (if the inhabitation is a city), we have a separation by size (rural, small, middle big, with <5k, <20k, <100k, >100k), but never even heard the term "rural city". The english wiki entry of "town" links to the German wiki entry for "small city".
Village could be of any size, just doesn't have city rights (apparently needs to be more than 10 houses though; as said, technically The Hague is a village with 500k people).

 

[schlaufuchs]

We just don't have more terms .
In German it's village or city (disregarding municipality), all other terms do not exist or are not in common use (don't think anyone e.g. uses in normal day to day speech the German words for hamlet or so).
Wiki says that within the cities (if the inhabitation is a city), we have a separation by size (rural, small, middle big, with <5k, <20k, <100k, >100k), but never even heard the term "rural city". The english wiki entry of "town" links to the German wiki entry for "small city".
Village could be of any size, just doesn't have city rights (apparently needs to be more than 10 houses though; as said, technically The Hague is a village with 500k people).

English is the same, at least in American colloquial parlance. It's either town or city. Village implies something more archaic. I think thatched roofs when I hear the term.

 

[Arwon]

This is mostly the same in Australia. The term village would mostly only be used for tourist branding of a historical township.

However in the UK they do use the term village to mean small town. When I was dating someone from Birmingham she referred to coming from "a village" which turned out to be a suburb of the urban area covering Black Country/Birmingham/West Midlands (she was from either in or near Walsall), that used to be an independent settlement but is now part of the metropolitan area.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

It doesn't really matter what it's named or how people move within it, the point is it'still a single interconnected and integrated area. Can be monocentric or polycentric.

Meanwhile, I found this animation of commuters who work in LA County. Dots are sized by number of people from that residential origin and coloured by county. It's kinda cool.

That's extremely cool. Contains one error that illustrates the problem you run into when you stretch this concept of 'interconnected and integrated' too far though.

The error is that blue dots represent both Kern County and Ventura County.

And the problem is that those blue dots to the north have a whole bunch of blue dot neighbors who commute to Bakersfield...or just plain live there. Those blue dots to the northwest have a whole bunch of blue dot neighbors who commute to Ventura...or just plain live there...and they work with a whole lot of people who live in the northwest part of LA County. Maybe you could make an argument that Ventura is just another center in the polycentric LA area. You couldn't make that claim regarding Bakersfield, and if you ran a similar animation for people who work in Bakersfield you'd have a hard time not saying that a lot of the area in that animation is "metro Bakersfield."

So what arbitrary method do you use to establish borders between these polycentric areas? Ultimately, every city in Owen's bay area and every city in LA County and surrounding counties are a single integrated and interconnected area called California.

 

[Arwon]

That's extremely cool. Contains one error that illustrates the problem you run into when you stretch this concept of 'interconnected and integrated' too far though.

The error is that blue dots represent both Kern County and Ventura County.

And the problem is that those blue dots to the north have a whole bunch of blue dot neighbors who commute to Bakersfield...or just plain live there. Those blue dots to the northwest have a whole bunch of blue dot neighbors who commute to Ventura...or just plain live there...and they work with a whole lot of people who live in the northwest part of LA County. Maybe you could make an argument that Ventura is just another center in the polycentric LA area. You couldn't make that claim regarding Bakersfield, and if you ran a similar animation for people who work in Bakersfield you'd have a hard time not saying that a lot of the area in that animation is "metro Bakersfield."

So what arbitrary method do you use to establish borders between these polycentric areas? Ultimately, every city in Owen's bay area and every city in LA County and surrounding counties are a single integrated and interconnected area called California.

You look at where the greater integration lies, to identify metropolitan areas as a whole. Around each cluster will be a boundary beyond which there is greater integration with a neighbouring cluster instead. Presumably to the north of the Los Angeles metro area, that boundary is somewhere in Ventura.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Well, if you call Ventura a center in itself then you get a boundary somewhere around Simi Valley. Despite the number of green dots heading out of Palmdale to jobs closer to LA there are ten times more people staying, so if we called Palmdale an independent center we could create a boundary somewhere around Acton, since Acton is more 'integrated' with Palmdale than it is with Los Angeles.

Now, Palmdale is absolutely just another center in the polycentric area. I would say Ventura probably is as well. But how are you distinguishing a center of an adjacent area from another center in the polycentric area you started with?

 

[Silurian]

4K isn't a village, it is a large village (here we do have a specific term, although it doesn't translate well, ie 'head-village' ala headmaster).
Villages typically have <1000 people.

Maybe a workable account (for a normal size of population/land) would be:

Village: <1000
Large Village: 1000> <5000
Small town ... <10000
Town ... <100000
City >100000

I would agree with that but add

Hamlet <500

 

[warpus]

Hamlet - There is a bottle
Village - There is a drunk
Town - There is a bar
City - There is a brewery

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Out of curiosity, I looked up the criteria for cities, towns, etc. in my province: http://www.municipalaffairs.alberta.ca/am_types_of_municipalities_in_alberta

According to the website:

Cities

To qualify as a city, there must be sufficient population size present with over 10,000 people. Cities may establish ward systems with the same number of councillors in each ward. Candidates, or those elected to the municipal council, are required to be residents of the wards they represent. Cities are governed by a mayor who is elected at large and an even number of councillors or aldermen. There should always be an odd number of people on council to avoid tie votes. Elections for cities and all local government units are held every four years.

We used to have municipal elections every 3 years. The change to 4 years is recent. Some people have been suggesting that we need a ward system here, but most feel it isn't needed, and that our population isn't large enough to be sure of getting at least one representative of every ward. Another strike against that is the idea that if a councilor only represents a single ward, that person would be less inclined to be concerned about other areas of the city.

Towns

A town can be formed when the population is at least 1,000 people and may exceed 10,000 people unless it requests a change to city status.

Sometimes it's better to wait to apply for city status. There are a couple of Central Alberta municipalities that did this. They were towns for decades longer than they might have been, but their councils felt it was more prudent to wait until they had more population and better planning and resources.

Villages
Villages may be formed upon request by 30% of electors in a community with a population of at least 300 people. They may apply for town status when the population reaches 1,000 people.

And so on. We have hamlets and other divisions, but by this point pretty much nobody refers to a place as a "hamlet." We tend to think of such places as "wide spots in the middle of the road."

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Hamlet - There is a bottle
Village - There is a drunk
Town - There is a bar
City - There is a brewery

Metropolis - there is a distillery.

 

[Arwon]

Well, if you call Ventura a center in itself then you get a boundary somewhere around Simi Valley. Despite the number of green dots heading out of Palmdale to jobs closer to LA there are ten times more people staying, so if we called Palmdale an independent center we could create a boundary somewhere around Acton, since Acton is more 'integrated' with Palmdale than it is with Los Angeles.

Now, Palmdale is absolutely just another center in the polycentric area. I would say Ventura probably is as well. But how are you distinguishing a center of an adjacent area from another center in the polycentric area you started with?

This is an image that I think demonstrates how you would do that. This article does it by looking at the statistical significance of certain point to point commuter flows compared to others:

And zoomed out a bit. The colours each represent urban regions identified naively as interconnected (ie by algorithm rather than by human knowledge of political geography.

The US Census Bureau apparently is a bit cruder in its thresholds of interconnectedness, but this significance based approach seems to draw the line around Santa Barbera as a point where a lot of commutes are going to different places rather than greater LA.