city, town, village

No specific guidelines exist for deciding what one should call a populated area. Size is relative, and importance is largely in the eye and mind. One can fairly say that a town is smaller than a city and larger than a village, but no reliable regulations suggest just what is needed to make a town a city or a village a town. A suburb may be a village within a town, itself one of a group of towns making up a thickly populated area that in turn is called a city. A village may be either a small town or a group of houses and other buildings in a rural area; in some states, a village is a settlement or hamlet until it is incorporated and forms its own local government. A town or township has fixed <ENTRY NOT COMPLETE!>