A town is a type of a human settlement . Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities , though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
102-486: Kowale Pańskie ( pronounced [kɔˈvalɛ ˈpaj̃skʲɛ] ) is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Kawęczyn , within Turek County , Greater Poland Voivodeship , in west-central Poland. It lies approximately 4 kilometres (2 mi) north of Kawęczyn , 10 km (6 mi) south of Turek , and 122 km (76 mi) south-east of the regional capital Poznań . Village Kowale existed already in
204-408: A Millionenstadt , a city with anywhere between one and five million inhabitants (such as Cologne , Munich , Hamburg and Berlin ). Also, a city with more than five million inhabitants is often referred to as a Megastadt (commonly translated as megacity ). Historically, many settlements became a Stadt by being awarded a Stadtrecht in medieval times. In modern German language use,
306-503: A "masjid" ( mosque ) or " surau " , paddy fields and Malay houses on stilts . Malay and Indonesian villagers practice the culture of helping one another as a community, which is better known as "joint bearing of burdens" ( gotong royong ). They are family-oriented (especially the concept of respecting one's family [particularly the parents and elders]), courtesy and practice belief in God ( "Tuhan" ) as paramount to everything else. It
408-542: A further 17 towns , which have merged with a municipal parish ( vallasisene linn ). In Finland, there is no distinction between a town and a city as the word kaupunki is used for both bigger and smaller settlements, which are bigger than villages and boroughs; although when talking about the word town , the word pikkukaupunki is used ( pikku means 'little' or 'small'). There are over one hundred municipal towns in Finland. From an administrative standpoint,
510-530: 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 (like the garden of the palace of Het Loo in Apeldoorn , which was the model for the privy garden of William III and Mary II at Hampton Court ). In Old Norse tún means a (grassy) place between farmhouses, and the word is still used with
612-678: A transit ghetto for Polish Jews from the entire region spanning 16 settlements including Turek. The ghetto – centred around Czachulec – was known in German as Heidemühle in reference to an old windmill standing there; all Polish families were expelled from the zone with younger Poles taken to Germany for slave labour. The Nazis ordered the creation of a single Judenrat council for all Jewish communities together. The ghetto held 3,700 Jews; up to 18 families per each farmhouse living anywhere they could including in barnyards. In October 1941, SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange chose nearby Chełmno as
714-534: A city ( ciudad ), typically located in a rural environment. While commonly it is the smallest administrative unit ( municipio ), it is possible for a village to be legally composed of smaller population units in its territory. There is not a clear-cut distinction between villages, towns and cities in Spain, since they had been traditionally categorized according to their religious importance and their relationship with surrounding population units. Villages are more usual in
816-507: A few thousand residents, were usually larger than a typical selo in central Russia. In Ukraine , a village, ( Ukrainian : село , romanized : selo , IPA: [selo] ), is considered the lowest administrative unit. Villages are under the jurisdiction of a hromada administration. There is another smaller type of rural settlement which is designated in Ukrainian as a selyshche ( селище ). This type of community
918-451: A group of Jewish women. The final liquidation of the ghetto took place on 20 July 1942, when the remaining Jews were sent to Chełmno, but also murdered outside the village, along with Jewish hospital patients and 12 Jewish policemen. The inhabitants of Babiak , Dąbie , Dęby Szlacheckie , Grodziec, Izbica Kujawska , Kłodawa , Koło , Nowiny Brdowskie , and Sompolno were deported to Chełmno before March 1943. Village A village
1020-561: A higher degree of services . (There are a few exceptions, when towns of fewer than 50,000 people gained the status: Érd , Hódmezővásárhely , Salgótarján and Szekszárd ) As of middle 2013, there are only 23 such towns in Hungary. The 2011 Census of India defines towns of two types: statutory town and census town . Statutory town is defined as all places with a municipality , corporation , cantonment board or notified town area committee. Census towns are defined as places that satisfy
1122-604: A higher tier of local government, larger towns and cities may have the status of a kreisfreie Stadt , combining both the powers of a municipality and a district. Designations in different states are as diverse as e.g. in Australian States and Territories, and differ from state to state. In some German states, the words Markt ('market'), Marktflecken (both used in southern Germany) or Flecken ('spot'; northern Germany e.g. in Lower Saxony ) designate
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#17327826880901224-426: A municipality must have at least 3,000 inhabitants to have the right to request the town title. Market towns usually have between 500 and 4,000 inhabitants, with median and average both around 1,000. In Denmark, in many contexts no distinction is made between "city", "town" and "village"; all three translate as by . In more specific use, for small villages and hamlets the word landsby (meaning 'country town')
1326-414: A part of a municipality are called frazione , whereas the village that hosts the municipal seat is called paese (town) or capoluogo . A non-profit private association of small Italian towns of strong historical and artistic interest named I Borghi più belli d'Italia (English: The most beautiful Villages of Italy ) and affiliated to the international association The Most Beautiful Villages in
1428-641: A similar meaning in modern Norwegian. Old English tūn 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 (as in the Scots word fermtoun ) at one end of
1530-488: A small city or large village; and occasionally even hamlets ). 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
1632-500: A small proportion of the population living in them. The Industrial Revolution attracted people in larger numbers to work in mills and factories; the concentration of people caused many villages to grow into towns and cities. This also enabled specialization of labor and crafts and the development of many trades. The trend of urbanization continues but not always in connection with industrialization. Historically, homes were situated together for sociability and defence, and land surrounding
1734-537: A social and technical infrastructure, as well as a population of no fewer than 3500 people. For resort settlements the requirements are lower with the population needing to be no fewer than 1000 people but infrastructure requirements remain. The legal definition of a town in Canada varies by province or territory , as each has jurisdiction over defining and legislating towns, cities and other types of municipal organization within its own boundaries. The province of Quebec
1836-408: A town such as Parun , the capital of Nuristan Province , whose population is less 20,000 people. In Albania and Kosovo qytezë means 'town', which is very similar to the word for city ( qytet ), 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
1938-563: A town-like residential community between Gemeinde and Stadt with special importance to its outer conurbation area. Historically those had Marktrecht (market right) but not full town privileges; see Market town . The legal denomination of a specific settlement may differ from its common designation (e.g. Samtgemeinde – a legal term in Lower Saxony for a group of villages [ Dorf , pl. Dörfer ] with common local government created by combining municipalities [ Gemeinde , pl. Gemeinden ]). In ordinary speech, Greeks use
2040-405: A village around the lord's manor, a Cossack family often lived on its own farm, called khutor . A number of such khutors plus a central village made up the administrative unit with a center in a stanitsa ( Russian : станица , romanized : stanitsa ; Ukrainian : станиця , romanized : stanytsya , lit. 'stanytsia'). Such stanitsas , often with
2142-620: A village is ves ( Polish : wieś, wioska ; Czech : ves, vesnice ; Slovak : ves ; Slovene : vas ; Russian : весь , romanized : ves ). In Slovenia , the word selo is used for very small villages (fewer than 100 people) and in dialects; the Slovene word vas is used all over Slovenia . In Russia and Bulgaria , the word ves is archaic, but remains in idioms and locality names, such as Vesyegonsk and Belevehchevo . The most commonly used word for village in Slovak
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#17327826880902244-451: Is Il fascino dell'Italia nascosta ("The charm of hidden Italy"). As of November 2023, 361 villages in Italy have been listed in "The Most Beautiful Villages of Italy". In Spain, a village ( pueblo ) refers to a small population unit, smaller than a town ( villa [an archaic term that survives only in official uses, such as the official name of Spain's capital, "la Villa de Madrid"]) and
2346-704: Is Stadt , as it is the case in many other languages that do not differentiate between these concepts. The word for a 'village', as a smaller settlement, is Dorf . However, the International Statistics Conference of 1887 defined different sizes of Stadt , based on their population size, as follows: Landstadt ('country town'; under 5,000), Kleinstadt ('small town'; 5,000 to 20,000), Mittelstadt ('middle town'; between 20,000 and 100,000) and Großstadt ("large town"; 100,000 to 1,000,000). The term Großstadt may be translated as 'city'. In addition, Germans may speak of
2448-651: Is dedina (dialectical also dzedzina ). The word's etymology may be (or may not be) rooted in the verb dediť ("to inherit"), referencing the inheriting of whole villages or properties within villages by noblemen or wealthy landowners. Another etymology could be related to the Sanskrit word deśá ( देश ) similar to the Afghan deh , Bengal desh and Indonesian desa . The term ves appears in settlement names (mostly villages, but also some towns that evolved over time from villages). The dialect term for village in east Slovakia
2550-422: Is 11%. It also stated that the state of the environment in the small towns and villages is good apart from the low level of infrastructure. In Bulgaria, it is popular to visit villages for the atmosphere, culture, crafts, hospitality of the people and the surrounding nature. This is called selski turizam ( Bulgarian : селски туризъм ), meaning "village tourism". In Russia, as of the 2010 Census , 26.3% of
2652-505: Is Yiddish, derived from the word shtot (town) with the suffix -l , a diminutive . Shtetlekh first began to appear in the 13th century, and were characteristic aspects of Jewish life in central and Eastern Europe until the 1940s. The shtetl occupies an important place in Jewish collective memory (particularly the history of Ashkenazi Jews) and has been depicted extensively in literature, visual art, theatre, and film, including such examples as
2754-471: Is a de facto statutory city. All the Czech municipalities with more than 40,000 inhabitants are cities. Town and market town are above all ceremonious honorary degrees, referring to population, history and regional significance of a municipality. As the statistics of Czech municipalities shows, towns usually have between 1,000 and 35,000 inhabitants, with median around 4,000 and average around 6,500. Nowadays
2856-408: Is a clustered human settlement or community , larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas , the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighborhoods. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings ; however, transient villages can occur. Further,
2958-420: Is administered according to traditions and customary law ( adat ), while a kelurahan is administered along more "modern" principles. Desa are generally located in rural areas while kelurahan are generally urban subdivisions. A village head is respectively called kepala desa or lurah . Both are elected by the local community. A desa or kelurahan is the subdivision of a kecamatan (district), in turn
3060-464: Is also valal (or valala ). Dedina is unrelated to the rarer east Slavic term derevna , which refers to a village with wooden ( derevo ) housing. In Bulgaria , the different types of sela vary from a small selo of 5 to 30 families to one of several thousand people. According to a 2002 census, in that year there were 2,385,000 Bulgarian citizens living in settlements classified as villages . A 2004 Human Settlement Profile on Bulgaria conducted by
3162-595: Is common for Vietnamese villagers to prefer to be buried in their village upon death. Selo ( Cyrillic : село; Polish : sioło ) is a Slavic word meaning "village" in Bosnia and Herzegovina , Bulgaria , Croatia , North Macedonia , Russia , Serbia , and Ukraine . For example, there are numerous sela (села; plural of selo ) called Novo Selo (Ново Село, "New Village") in Bulgaria , Croatia , Montenegro , Serbia , and North Macedonia . Another Slavic word for
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3264-667: Is common to see a cemetery near the mosque. In Sarawak and East Kalimantan , some villages are called 'long', primarily inhabited by the Orang Ulu . Malaysian kampung were once aplenty in Singapore but there are almost no remaining kampung villages; the very few to have survived until today are mostly on outlying islands surrounding mainland Singapore, such as Pulau Ubin . Mainland Singapore used to have many kampung villages but modern developments and rapid urbanisation works have seen them bulldozed away; Kampong Lorong Buangkok
3366-422: Is commonly referred to as a city or as a town, no distinction and no objective legal criteria exist to make such a distinction under law. Ontario allows municipalities to select whichever administrative term they like with no legal distinction existing between towns, townships, cities, and villages. Instead all municipalities, with the exception of Toronto and Ottawa, fall into one of three legal categories under
3468-493: Is compulsory for the Muslim pupils in the country, a mosque, and a community centre ( Malay : balai raya or dewan kemasyarakatan ). In Indonesia , depending on the principles they are administered, villages are called kampung or desa (or kelurahan for those with urban functions). A desa (a term that derives from a Sanskrit word meaning "country" that is found in the name " Bangladesh "= bangla and desh/desha )
3570-530: Is difficult to call the remaining provincial capitals "large towns" as, in general, they are less developed and have shrinking population, some with as few as 30,000 inhabitants. In Bulgaria the Council of Ministers defines what constitutes a settlement, while the President of Bulgaria grants each settlement its title. In 2005 the requirement that villages that wish to classify themselves as town must have
3672-521: Is locally known by the Malay word kampung (also spelt as kampong ). They may be villages in the traditional or anthropological sense but may also comprise delineated residential settlements, both rural and urban. The community of a village is headed by a village head ( Malay : ketua kampung ). Communal infrastructure for the villagers may include a primary school, a religious school providing ugama or Islamic religious primary education which
3774-653: Is marked by kinship and exchange relations. Auyl ( Kazakh : Ауыл ) is a Kazakh word meaning "village" in Kazakhstan . According to the 2009 census of Kazakhstan, 42.7% of Kazakhstani citizens (7.5 million people) live in 8172 different villages. To refer to this concept along with the word "auyl" often used the Slavic word "selo" in Northern Kazakhstan. In mainland China , villages 村 are divisions under township Zh:乡 or town Zh:镇 . In
3876-561: 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. The modern phenomenon of extensive suburban growth, satellite urban development, and migration of city dwellers to villages has further complicated
3978-579: Is often referred to in English as a "settlement". In the new law about populated places in Ukraine the term "selyshche", has a specific meaning. In the past the word "selyshche" was more ambiguous and there were distinction between rural selyshche and selyshche miskoho typu ( urban-type settlement ), abbreviated smt in Ukrainian. There we also dacha , fisherman, etc. selyshches The khutir ( хутір ) and stanytsia ( станиця ) are not part of
4080-420: Is partitioned into 2098 municipalities ( German : Gemeinden ) of fundamentally equal rank. Larger municipalities are designated as market towns ( German : Marktgemeinden ) or cities ( Städte ), 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
4182-593: Is the last surviving village on the country's mainland. The term "kampung", sometimes spelled "kampong", is one of many Malay words to have entered common usage in Malaysia and Singapore. Locally, the term is frequently used to refer to either one's hometown or a rural village, depending on the intended context. In urban areas of the Philippines , the term "village" most commonly refers to private subdivisions, especially gated communities . These villages emerged in
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4284-468: Is unique in that it makes no distinction under law between towns and cities. There is no intermediate level in French between village and ville ( municipality is an administrative term usually applied to a legal, not geographical entity), so both are combined under the single legal status of ville . While an informal preference may exist among English speakers as to whether any individual ville
4386-492: Is used, while the Danish equivalent of English city is storby (meaning 'large town'). For formal purposes, urban areas having at least 200 inhabitants are considered by . Historically some towns held various privileges, the most important of which was the right to hold market. They were administered separately from the rural areas in both fiscal, military and legal matters. Such towns are known as købstad (roughly
4488-485: Is very common for villagers to produce their own food. As prosperous urbanites purchase village houses for their second homes, Russian villages sometimes are transformed into dacha settlements, used mostly for seasonal residence. The historically Cossack regions of Southern Russia and parts of Ukraine , with their fertile soil and absence of serfdom , had a rather different pattern of settlement from central and northern Russia. While peasants of central Russia lived in
4590-498: Is worshiped, a common well, "đồng lúa" ( rice field), "chùa" (temple) and houses of all families in the village. All the people in Vietnam's villages usually have a blood relationship. They are farmers who grow rice and have the same traditional handicraft . Vietnam's villages have an important role in society (Vietnamese saying: "Custom rules the law" -"Phép vua thua lệ làng" [literally: the king's law yields to village customs]). It
4692-463: The English language ) for "a Malay hamlet or village in a Malay-speaking country". In Malaysia, a kampung is determined as a locality with 10,000 or fewer people. Since historical times, every Malay village came under the leadership of a penghulu (village chief), who has the power to hear civil matters in his village (see Courts of Malaysia for more details). A Malay village typically contains
4794-562: The Lincolnshire Wolds , the villages are often found along the spring line halfway down the hillsides, and originate as spring line settlements , with the original open field systems around the village. In northern Scotland , most villages are planned to a grid pattern located on or close to major roads, whereas in areas such as the Forest of Arden , woodland clearances produced small hamlets around village greens. Because of
4896-506: The Partitions of Poland , the population of Kowale Pańskie (and the adjacent Wola Kowalska) was only 323 people, half of whom lived and worked around the local historic manor (built in 1750), owned by industrialist Robert Schultz who run a steam-powered mill. Kowale Pańskie consisted of 30 farms. The inhabitants was predominantly Polish, with some German and even fewer Jewish families. Following Poland's return to independence Kowale became
4998-465: The Republic of China ( Taiwan ), villages are divisions under townships or county-administered cities . The village is called a tsuen or cūn (村) under a rural township (鄉) and a li (里) under an urban township (鎮) or a county-controlled city. See also Li (unit) . In Brunei , villages are officially the third- and lowest-level subdivisions of Brunei below districts and mukims . A village
5100-608: The Russian Empire , a volost , or its Soviet or modern Russian successor, a selsoviet , was typically headquartered in a selo and embraced a few neighboring villages. In the 1960s–1970s, the depopulation of the smaller villages was driven by the central planners' drive in order to get the farm workers out of smaller, " prospectless " hamlets and into the collective or state farms ' main villages or even larger towns and cities , with more amenities. Most Russian rural residents are involved in agricultural work, and it
5202-484: The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs stated that: The most intensive is the migration "city – city". Approximately 46% of all migrated people have changed their residence from one city to another. The share of the migration processes "village – city" is significantly less – 23% and "city – village" – 20%. The migration "village – village" in 2002
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#17327826880905304-628: The administrative division any longer, primarily due to collectivization . Khutirs were very small rural localities consisting of just few housing units and were sort of individual farms. They became really popular during the Stolypin reform in the early 20th century. During the collectivization, however, residents of such settlements were usually declared to be kulaks and had all their property confiscated and distributed to others ( nationalized ) without any compensation. The stanitsa likewise has not survived as an administrative term. The stanitsa
5406-479: The northern and central regions , Azores Islands and in the Alentejo . Most of them have a church and a "Casa do Povo" (people's house), where the village's summer romarias or religious festivities are usually held. Summer is also when many villages are host to a range of folk festivals and fairs, taking advantage of the fact that many of the locals who reside abroad tend to come back to their native village for
5508-533: The 13th century. Bought by Archbishop Jakub Świnka around 1280 it remained the property of the Gniezno Archdiocese until the 18th century. The name Kowale appeared in the 17th century, in reference to a community of blacksmiths ( kowale in Polish ) servicing local market. The church, founded by Antoni Czarnecki, was built in 1847; the church's parish included 12 villages. In mid 19th century, during
5610-484: The 1950s, to accommodate exponential population increase. The first new towns included Tsuen Wan and Kwun Tong . In the late 1960s and the 1970s, another stage of new town developments was launched. Nine new towns have been developed so far. Land use is carefully planned and development provides plenty of room for public housing projects. Rail transport is usually available at a later stage. The first towns are Sha Tin , Tsuen Wan , Tuen Mun and Tseung Kwan O . Tuen Mun
5712-541: The 21st century, merged most κοινότητες with the nearest δήμοι , dividing the whole country into 325 self-governing δήμοι . The former municipalities survive as administrative subdivisions ( δημοτικά διαμερίσματα , δημοτικές ενότητες ). Cyprus, including the Turkish-occupied areas, is also divided into 39 δήμοι (in principle, with at least 5,000 inhabitants, though there are exceptions) and 576 κοινότητες . Hong Kong started developing new towns in
5814-657: The Minister of Internal Affairs selects candidates from a committee-screened list of applicants, whom the President of Republic usually affirms by issuing a bill of town's rank to them. Since being a town carries extra fiscal support from the government, many relatively small villages try to win the status of városi rang ('town rank') nowadays. Before the fall of communism in 1990, Hungarian villages with fewer than 10,000 residents were not allowed to become towns. Recently some settlements as small as 2,500 souls have received
5916-517: The Municipalities Act: Single-tier (I.e. towns that are located within a region or county but that are considered separate for municipal purposes such as Hamilton ), lower-tier (i.e. municipalities that are part of a region or county such as St. Catharines ), or upper-tier (i.e. regional municipalities such as Niagara ). Accordingly, many larger municipalities continue to use the title of town due to it better reflecting
6018-677: The National Statistics Institute (INE) as an urban entity with a population from 2001 to 5000 or an area with a population from 1001 to 2000 and an established economic activity. In Czechia , a municipality can obtain the title of a city ( Czech : statutární město ), town ( Czech : město ) or market town ( Czech : městys ). The title is granted by law. Statutory cities (in English usually called just "cities"), which are defined by law no. 128/2000 Coll., can define their own self-governing municipal districts. There are 26 such cities, in addition to Prague , which
6120-551: The Netherlands. A village in the UK is a compact settlement of houses, smaller in size than a town, and generally based on agriculture or, in some areas, mining (such as Ouston, County Durham ), quarrying or sea fishing. They are very similar to those in Ireland. The major factors in the type of settlement are: location of water sources, organization of agriculture and landholding, and likelihood of flooding. For example, in areas such as
6222-704: The World , was created in 2001 on the initiative of the Tourism Council of the National Association of Italian Municipalities with the aim of preserving and maintaining villages of quality heritage. Founded to contribute to safeguarding, conserving and revitalizing small villages and municipalities, but sometimes even individual hamlets, which, being outside the main tourist circuits, they risk, despite their great value, being forgotten with consequent degradation, depopulation and abandonment. Its motto
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#17327826880906324-475: The appurtenances of local government (e.g. a police force). 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
6426-449: The beginning of 20th century. According to the 2011 census of India , 69% of Indians (around 833 million people) live in villages. As per 2011 census of India, there are a total of 649,481 villages in India .The size of these villages varies considerably. 236,004 Indian villages have a population of fewer than 500, while 3,976 villages have a population of 10,000+. Most of the villages have their own temple, mosque, or church, depending on
6528-469: The beginning of the root word (e.g. nagyváros ) have been normalized to differentiate between cities and towns (towns being smaller, therefore bearing the name kisváros .) In Hungary, a village can gain the status of város ('town'), if it meets a set of diverse conditions for quality of life and development of certain public services and utilities (e.g. having a local secondary school or installing full-area sewage collection pipe network). Every year
6630-399: The character of the municipality. For example, Oakville (2021 Population: 213,759) is the largest municipality to use the title of town to reflect its largely suburban character while other municipalities such as Richmond Hill (2021 Population: 202,022) have opted to change their status from "town" to "city" to encourage investment. In Chile , towns (Spanish: pueblos ) are defined by
6732-470: 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: In Afghanistan , a city and a town are both referred to as shār ( Dari : شهر ; Pashto : ښار ). The capital of each of its 34 provinces may include a major city such as Kabul whose population is over five million people or
6834-416: The country's population lives in rural localities ; down from 26.7% recorded in the 2002 Census . Multiple types of rural localities exist, but the two most common are derevnya ( деревня ) and selo ( село ). Historically, the formal indication of status was religious: a city ( gorod , город ) had a cathedral , a selo had a church, while a derevnya had neither. The lowest administrative unit of
6936-484: The county seat ( gmina ) in 1928 consisting of 59 settlements. Volunteer fire station was built, a school complex (1933), and a community bank ( Gminna Kasa Pożyczkowo-Oszczędnościowa ). With the German invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, Kowale became part of Turek Kreis in Reichsgau Wartheland territory annexed directly to Nazi Germany . Kowale county was chosen as the location of
7038-414: 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
7140-614: 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 ( Statutarstädte ). 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
7242-436: The dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, not scattered broadly over the landscape, as a dispersed settlement . In the past, villages were a usual form of community for societies that practice subsistence agriculture and also for some non-agricultural societies. In Great Britain , a hamlet earned the right to be called a village when it built a church . In many cultures, towns and cities were few, with only
7344-421: The historical importance, the existence of central functions (education, retail etc.) and the population density of an urban place might also be taken as characteristics of a Stadt . The modern local government organisation is subject to the laws of each state and refers to a Gemeinde ( municipality ), regardless of its historic title. While most Gemeinden form part of a Landkreis ( district ) on
7446-512: The histories of Jewish communities destroyed during the Holocaust. The Insee classifies French communes into four groups according to population density: A commune in Group 3 or 4 is considered as a village ( commune rurale ). An independent association named Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (affiliated to the international association The Most Beautiful Villages in the World ),
7548-425: The holidays. In the flood-prone districts of the Netherlands, particularly in the northern provinces of Friesland and Groningen, villages were traditionally built on low man-made hills called terpen before the introduction of regional dyke-systems. In modern days, the term dorp (lit. "village") is usually applied to settlements no larger than 20,000, though there's no official law regarding status of settlements in
7650-456: The living quarters was farmed. Traditional fishing villages were based on artisan fishing and located adjacent to fishing grounds. In toponomastic terminology, the names of individual villages are called Comonyms (from Ancient Greek κώμη / village and ὄνυμα / name, [cf. ὄνομα]). From Middle English village , from Old French village , from Latin villāticus , ultimately from Latin villa (English villa ). In Afghanistan,
7752-663: The local religious following. The majority of Pakistanis live in rural areas. According to the 2017 census , about 64% of the Pakistani population lives in rural areas. Most rural areas in Pakistan tend to be near cities, and are peri-urban areas. This is due to the definition of a rural area in Pakistan being an area that does not fall within an urban boundary. A village is called deh or gaaon in Urdu . Pakistani village life
7854-750: The location of the first ever extermination camp . The gas vans manufactured in Berlin were delivered some time in November. On 8 November 1941, all Jews from the Kowale Pańskie Ghetto were herded in the village of Bielawki for a selection. About 1,100 people were declared "incapable of work" and on 13–14 November transported to the death camp in Chełmno. The younger and stronger men in Kowale were deported to forced labour near Poznań in early 1942, followed by
7956-412: The mid-20th century and were initially the domain of elite urban dwellers. Those are common in major cities in the country and their residents have a wide range of income levels. Such villages may or may not correspond to a barangay (the country's basic unit of government, also glossed as village), or be privately administered. Barangays correspond more to precolonial villages; the chairman (formerly
8058-721: The name like " Srinagar "= sri and nagar/nagari ). In some areas such as Tanah Toraja, elders take turns watching over the village at a command post. As a general rule, desa and kelurahan are groupings of hamlets ( kampung in Indonesian, dusun in Javanese , banjar in Bali). a kampung is defined today as a village in Brunei and Indonesia . Kampung is a term used in Malaysia , (sometimes spelling kampong or kompong in
8160-542: The name of their respective seats, and if they were not municipal seats, they would have the category of village. Bulgarians do not, in general, differentiate between 'city' and 'town'. However, in everyday language and media the terms "large towns" and "small towns" are in use. "Large towns" usually refers to Sofia , Plovdiv , Varna and Burgas , which have population over 200,000. Ruse and Stara Zagora are often included as well due to presence of relatively developed infrastructure and population over 100,000 threshold. It
8262-418: 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. In Brazil, since 1938, it was defined that the seat of the municipalities would pass to the category of city and give it the name and the districts would be designated by
8364-476: The properties within the town. The United States Census identifies many census-designated places (CDPs) 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. 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,
8466-417: The rank of town (e.g. Visegrád, Zalakaros or Gönc) and meeting the conditions of development is often disregarded to quickly elevate larger villages into towns. As of middle 2013, there are 346 towns in Hungary, encompassing some 69% of the entire population. Towns of more than 50,000 people are able to gain the status of megyei jogú város (town with the rights of a county ), which allows them to maintain
8568-481: The region and the settlement's market rights. Smaller villages usually do not have their own government. Instead, they are part ( Ortsteil ) of the municipality of a nearby town. In Italy, villages are spread throughout the country. No legal definition of village exists in Italian law; nonetheless, a settlement inhabited by less than 2000 people is usually described as "village". More often, Italian villages that are
8670-562: The same meaning as borough albeit deriving from a different etymology) and they retain the exclusive right to the title even after the last vestiges of their privileges vanished through the reform of the local administration carried through in 1970. In Estonia , there is no distinction between a town and a city as the word linn is used for both bigger and smaller settlements, which are bigger than villages and boroughs. There are 30 municipal towns ( omavalitsuslik linn ) in Estonia and
8772-404: 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 (from Ancient Greek ἄστυ 'town, city', and ὄνομα 'name'). In some cases, town is an alternative name for "city" or "village" (especially
8874-430: The smallest level of local authorities are all called communes . They can have anywhere from a handful to millions of inhabitants, and France has 36,000 of them. The French term for town is bourg but French laws generally do not distinguish between towns and cities which are all commonly called villes . However, some laws do treat these authorities differently based on the population and different rules apply to
8976-703: The subdivision of a kabupaten (regency) or kota (city). The same general concept applies all over Indonesia. However, there is some variation among the vast numbers of Austronesian ethnic groups. For instance, in Bali villages have been created by grouping traditional hamlets or banjar , which constitute the basis of Balinese social life. In the Minangkabau area in West Sumatra province, traditional villages are called nagari (a term deriving from another Sanskrit word meaning "city", which can be found in
9078-421: 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. 193 countries have been involved in a common effort to agree on a common statistical definition of
9180-611: The three big cities Paris , Lyon and Marseille . For historical reasons, six communes in the Meuse département exist as independent administrative entities despite having no inhabitants at all. For statistical purposes, the national statistical institute ( INSEE ) operates a distinction between urban areas with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants and bigger communes, the latter being called villes . Smaller settlements are usually called villages . Germans do not, in general, differentiate between 'city' and 'town'. The German word for both
9282-455: The three categories: cities, towns and rural areas. 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: Through different periods of recorded history, many towns have grown into sizeable settlements, with the development of properties, centres of culture, and specialized economies. Çatalhöyük , currently an archaeological site,
9384-794: The topography of the Clent Hills the north Worcestershire village of Clent is an example of a village with no centre but instead consists of series of hamlets scattered on and around the Hills. Town The word "town" shares an origin with the German word Zaun , the Dutch word tuin , and the Old Norse tún . The original Proto-Germanic word, * tūnan , is thought to be an early borrowing from Proto-Celtic * dūnom (cf. Old Irish dún , Welsh din ). The original sense of
9486-513: The village datu ) now settles administrative, intrapersonal, and political matters or polices the area though with much less authority and respect than in Indonesia or Malaysia. Village, or "làng", is a basis of Vietnam society. Vietnam's village is the typical symbol of Asian agricultural production. Vietnam's village typically contains: a village gate, "lũy tre" (bamboo hedges), "đình làng" (communal house) where "thành hoàng" ( tutelary god )
9588-637: The village, or deh ( Dari / Pashto : ده) is the mid-size settlement type in Afghan society, trumping the United States hamlet or qala ( Dari : قلعه, Pashto : کلي), though smaller than the town, or shār ( Dari : شهر, Pashto : ښار). In contrast to the qala , the deh is generally a bigger settlement which includes a commercial area, while the yet larger shār includes governmental buildings and services such as schools of higher education, basic health care, police stations etc. "The soul of India lives in its villages," declared Mahatma Gandhi at
9690-694: The walls of a castle. 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 (till the 1990s) in Victoria . The Austrian legal system does not distinguish between villages, towns, and cities. The country
9792-617: The word χωριό ('village') to refer to smaller settlements and the word πόλη or πολιτεία ('city') to refer to larger ones. Careful speakers may also use the word κωμόπολη to refer to towns with a population of 2,000–9,999. In Greek administrative law there used to be a distinction between δήμοι , i.e. municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants or considered important for some other geographical (county seats), historical or ecclesiastical (bishops' seats) reason, and κοινότητες, referring to smaller self-governing units, mostly villages. A sweeping reform, carried out in two stages early in
9894-442: The word in both Germanic and Celtic was that of a fortress or an enclosure. Cognates of 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
9996-706: The writing of Mendele Mocher Sforim , Isaac Bashevis Singer , and Sholem Aleichem . Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the Dairyman stories, set in the fictional shtetl of Anatevka, were eventually adapted into the Fiddler on the Roof stage play (which itself was later adapted for film). During the Holocaust , most shtetlekh were depopulated of their Jewish communities through mass deportations or liquidations. Many are memorialized in yizkor books , written testimonies that describe
10098-483: Was a type of a collective community that could include one or more settlements such as villages, khutirs , and others. Today, stanitsa -type formations have only survived in Kuban ( Russian Federation ) where Ukrainians were resettled during the time of the Russian Empire . A shtetl (plural shtetlekh ) was a small market town or village with a majority Jewish population in central and eastern Europe. The word shtetl
10200-498: Was considered to be the oldest inhabited town, or proto-city , that existed from around 7500 BC. Inscribed as a World Heritage Site , it remains a depopulated town with a complex of ruins. 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. Subsequently, it lost its agricultural functions and reduced its activity to residential. With
10302-454: Was created in 1982 to promote assets of small and picturesque French villages of quality heritage. As of July 2023, 172 villages in France have been listed in "The Most Beautiful Villages of France". In Germany a Dorf (village) usually consists of at least a few houses but can have up to a few thousand inhabitants. Larger villages can also be referred to as a Flecken or Markt depending on
10404-544: Was intended to be self-reliant, but was not successful and turned into a bedroom community like the other new towns. More recent developments are Tin Shui Wai and North Lantau (Tung Chung-Tai Ho) . In Hungary there is no official distinction between a city and a town (the word for both in Hungarian is város ). Nevertheless, the expressions formed by adding the adjectives kis ('small') and nagy ('large') to
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