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71-451: Typically unitary authorities cover towns or cities which are large enough to function independently of a council or other authority. An authority can be a unit of a county or combined authority . In Canada, each province creates its own system of local government, so terminology varies substantially. In certain provinces (e.g. Alberta , Nova Scotia ) there is only one level of local government in that province, so no special term

142-408: 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,

213-542: 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,

284-530: 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

355-561: 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

426-604: 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

497-426: 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')

568-641: 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

639-642: A single tier of local government with some functions shared between groups of adjacent authorities. A single-tier system has existed in Northern Ireland since 1973. For many years the description of the number of tiers in UK local government arrangements has routinely ignored any current or previous bodies at the lowest level of authorities elected by the voters within their area such as parish (in England and Wales) or community councils; such bodies do not exist or have not existed in all areas. Northern Ireland

710-488: 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

781-537: 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

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852-408: 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

923-563: 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

994-704: 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

1065-471: 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

1136-557: Is a territorial collectivity, with legal personality and fiscal autonomy. In New Zealand , a unitary authority is a territorial authority (district, city or metropolitan area) that also performs the functions of a regional council (first-level division). There are five unitary authorities, they are (with the year they were constituted): Gisborne District Council (1989), Tasman District Council (1992), Nelson City Council (1992), Marlborough District Council (1992), and Auckland Council (2010). The Chatham Islands , located east of

1207-673: 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. 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

1278-422: 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

1349-530: 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

1420-611: Is divided into eleven districts for local government purposes. In Northern Ireland local councils have no responsibility for education, road building or housing (though they do nominate members to the advisory Northern Ireland Housing Council ). Their functions include waste and recycling services , leisure and community services, building control and local economic and cultural development. Since their reorganisation in 2015 councils in Northern Ireland have also taken on responsibility for planning functions. The collection of rates

1491-543: Is handled by the Land and Property Services agency. Local authorities in Scotland are unitary in nature but not in name. The Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 created a single tier of local government throughout Scotland. On 1 April 1996, 32 local government areas, each with a council , replaced the previous two-tier structure , which had regional, islands and district councils. Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (formerly

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1562-561: 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

1633-651: Is not subdivided into cantons , but its 20 districts are considered equivalent. The department councils of the two departments of Corsica and of the region merged into a unitary authority, officially a collectivité territoriale . Its area of competence covers the whole administrative region and the two administrative departments (which were kept at state level with their two prefectures and their respective subprefectures for state-managed services). The overseas departements and regions were all proposed to merge their single departmental council ( conseil départemental ) coexisting with their regional council ( conseil régional ) on

1704-565: Is one of the principal laws encouraging inter-municipal cooperation in France . It defined the roles of three new types of établissements publics de coopération intercommunale (EPCI, "Public establishments for inter-communal cooperation") with their own financing: Some previous structures such as communautés de ville , districts and syndicats d'agglomération nouvelle ("New town syndicates") were expected to merge into one of these three types of EPCI. This article relating to

1775-420: 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

1846-757: Is the equivalent term for a city with the competences of both the Gemeinde (municipality) and the Kreis (district, literally circle ) administrative level. The directly elected chief executive officer of a kreisfreie Stadt is called Oberbürgermeister (literally Superior Burgomaster , in English "Chief Mayor" or "Lord Mayor"). The British counties have no directly corresponding counterpart in Germany. This German system corresponds to statutory cities in Austria and in

1917-468: 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

1988-605: Is used to describe the situation. British Columbia has only one such municipality, Northern Rockies Regional Municipality , which was established in 2009. In Ontario the term single-tier municipalities is used, for a similar concept. Their character varies, and while most function as cities with no upper level of government, some function as counties or regional municipalities with no lower municipal subdivisions below them. They exist as individual census divisions , as well as separated municipalities . In Germany, kreisfreie Stadt ( lit.   ' circle-free city ' )

2059-492: 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

2130-556: The Council of the Isles of Scilly or any other single-tier authority formed under the older legislation and not since given the status of a unitary authority. This is distinct from the two-tier system of local government which still exists in most of England, where local government functions are divided between county councils (the upper tier) and district or borough councils. Until 1996 two-tier systems existed in Scotland and Wales , but these have now been replaced by systems based on

2201-521: The Local Government (Wales) Act 1994 as " principal councils ", and their areas as principal areas . Various other legislation (e.g. s.91(1) Environment Act 1995 ) includes the counties and county boroughs of Wales within their individual interpretations of the phrase "unitary authority" as an interpretive not a definitive description. In s.2 of the Act each council formed for a county is allocated

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2272-763: The South Island , have a council with its own special legislation, constituted (1995) with powers similar to those of a regional authority. In Poland , a miasto na prawach powiatu , or shortly powiat grodzki ( city with powiat rights , or urban county in short) is a, typically big, city which is also responsible for district (poviat) administrative level, being part of no other powiat (e.g. Kraków , Łódź , Wrocław , Poznań ). In total, 65 cities in Poland have this status. Most cities in Taiwan , in contrast to counties , have only one tier of local government. Unlike

2343-484: 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

2414-541: 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

2485-705: The Czech Republic . Until 1 January 2007, the municipalities of Copenhagen , Frederiksberg and Bornholm were not a part of a Danish county . The city of Paris works like a department council and a municipal council. Administratively at state level, it is both a department with a single departmental arrondissement (not to be confused with the 20 city districts of Paris, or arrondissements municipaux , which are local subdivisions existing in very populated municipalities, including Paris, Lyon and Marseille, with their own arrondissement councils and arrondissement mayors also elected during municipal elections), however

2556-657: 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

2627-517: 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

2698-677: 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

2769-807: The United States are also independent of any county government : Baltimore, Maryland , St. Louis, Missouri , and Carson City, Nevada . There are also several consolidated cities where the county government and municipal government are unified. San Francisco and Philadelphia are two examples, wherein the city and county are coterminous and have one singular governing body. The District of Columbia has had no lower tiers of government since 1871. Arlington County and Alexandria, Virginia , were returned to Virginia in 1847. The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 abolished all local governments including single remaining county and its two municipalities, Washington and Georgetown . Town A town

2840-778: The Western Isles Council) uses the alternative Gaelic designation Comhairle . While the phrase "unitary authority" is not used in Scottish legislation (whether from the Scottish Parliament or the UK Parliament), the term can be encountered (used either descriptively or erroneously) in a few official publications and in (usually erroneous) use by United Kingdom government departments. Local authorities in Wales are unitary in nature but are described by

2911-540: The administrative department (which is still subdivided into two subprefectures, one of which includes the métropole). So the metropole is not a unitary authority, and no longer an EPCI (like other French metropoles), but it has a specific status, considered equivalent to a department council, except that its seats are elected during the municipal French elections (at the same time as its municipal councils in each member commune ), and that (like departments and regions, but unlike other French EPCI's including other metropoles) it

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2982-412: 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

3053-469: 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

3124-399: 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

3195-778: The collective term 'unitary administration' to describe all local government areas which operate as unitary authorities. In England , "unitary authorities" are those local authorities set up in accordance with the Local Government Changes for England Regulations 1994 made under powers conferred by the Local Government Act 1992 to form a single tier of local government in specified areas and which are responsible for almost all local government functions within such areas. While outwardly appearing to be similar, single-tier authorities formed using older legislation are not unitary authorities thus excluding e.g.

3266-470: 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

3337-414: 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

3408-559: 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

3479-430: The following criteria: Public establishment of intercommunal cooperation The loi n° 99-586 du 12 juillet 1999 relative au renforcement et à la simplification de la coopération intercommunale ("Law 99-586 of 12 July 1999 relating to the improvement and simplification of inter- communal cooperation"), commonly called the loi Chevènement ("Chevènement law") after its proposer Jean-Pierre Chevènement ,

3550-421: 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

3621-558: The municipalities (known as New England towns ) are the only governing tier below the state government, though the former counties still exist in the ceremonial sense. In some areas, the reverse is true; for example, Howard County, Maryland and Arlington County, Virginia , are examples of counties that, despite being densely developed, have no municipalities and are thus the only tier of general-purpose local government. In Virginia, all municipalities with city status are, by definition, independent from any county. Three other cities across

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3692-542: 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

3763-418: 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

3834-403: The prefecture of Paris is split between the prefecture of police of Paris (which covers the three other surrounding departments in the first ring) and the department prefecture (which is also the region prefecture, whose competence on police does not cover the four departments of Paris and the small ring). As the department of Paris has no department council elected during departmental elections, it

3905-476: 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,

3976-417: 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

4047-505: The respective English and Welsh descriptions of " County Council " or " Cyngor Sir ", each council formed for a County Borough is allocated the respective descriptions of "County Borough Council" or " Cyngor Bwrdeistref Sirol "; in all cases the shorter alternative forms "Council" or "Cyngor" can be used. There are several types of single-tier governments in the United States. In the states of Connecticut , Rhode Island , and much of Massachusetts , county government has been abolished, and

4118-562: 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

4189-721: The same territory (at state level they are unified as DROM for their prefectures) into a collectivité unique . The proposal was rejected by local referendum in Guadeloupe and in Réunion , but this occurred in Martinique and French Guiana whose former departemental and regional councils were merged into a single unitary authority named assemblée , elected during departmental elections. Mayotte with its newer status of department chose to keep this designation for its unitary authority, named departmental council (no regional council

4260-404: 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

4331-430: 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

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4402-421: 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

4473-460: The three county-administered cities ( Chiayi , Keelung , and Hsinchu ), they are independent of their surrounding county. Special municipalities , with the exception of a few mountain indigenous districts within them, are also unitary. Each of the four countries of the United Kingdom uses a different term to describe their unitary authorities. However, the Office for National Statistics uses

4544-611: 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

4615-455: 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,

4686-694: 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

4757-617: 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

4828-442: 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

4899-498: 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

4970-405: Was ever created), but which also has the competence of a regional council (plus a few specific competences transferred from the state like other French overseas). The Métropole de Lyon was created as a metropole from an earlier EPCI ( public establishment of intercommunal cooperation ) but gained the competences of the departmental council. The departmental council of Rhône only covers the rest of

5041-544: 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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