<Enormous metropolitan area> is really just a small town--common in other places than the US?

Factual Questions
1

It’s quite standard in the United States for people to assert that many big cities are “really” small towns. I’m not talking about lines like this coming natives of Shanghai, or Cairo, or Sao Paulo, compared to which many US cities are indeed pretty small (especially if you consider the city proper rather than the whole metro area). Instead, it’s people native to the US, often to the city itself, who talk about how everybody knows everybody else, how news travels quickly, how there’s just, I don’t know, a small-town FEEL regardless of how many folks they pack into the city limits.

A few examples, culled from the internet:

“Miami really is a small town–don’t let anyone convince you otherwise! You just have to sort through the crowd to find your village.” [Miami, city only, has 400,000 people.]

“We hope to run into you around town in the near future. Seattle is a small town, after all!” [Seattle’s city population is 600,000.]

“He [NBA team owner] didn’t understand the marketplace, that Charlotte really is a small town where people want to believe you’re part of the fabric of the place.” [Charlotte’s population, city proper, is 730,000.]

“The culture is festive, the food is incredible, and the people will all tell you that even though San Antonio is one of the biggest cities in the country it’s really just a small town…” [1.3 million people make their home inside San Antonio’s city limits.]

“San Diego is a small town with big ambitions.” [Another 1.3 mil for San Diego, city proper.]

“Phoenix is actually a small town as opposed to a giant city…We want to be here.” [This “small town” is closing in on 1.5 million, city proper.]

Well, I could go on, but you get the drift.

Anyway: You’ll note that most of these quotes approve of the small-townness of these megalopolises. Okay, well, in the US there’s a long history of championing rural areas and small towns and small-town values. So what I want to know is, what about other countries? Do people say that Munich or Buenos Aires or Islamabad is “just a small town at heart”? Do the people of Morocco and Indonesia and Russia boast that their largest metro areas aren’t “really” big cities, but just small towns?

Not sure if this is best suited to GQ or something else, but thought I’d give it a whirl here. Thanks for any responses.

2

I doubt it. Sentimentality about small towns is pretty much an American thing, AFIK.

However, many of what Americans would consider to be, unambiguously and non-metaphorically, small towns, would probably be considered villages in Britain (I am not sure about the rest of the English speaking world). Similar sentimentality about village life certainly exists in the UK (and probably elsewhere), and I am sure there are people who have claimed that London, or other large conurbations, are really villages, where everyone (i.e., everyone who matters, i.e., the people I know and care about, as opposed to the faceless masses) knows one another.

The peculiar American fixation on the virtues of “small towns” may be no more than an artifact resulting from the fact that “village” is relatively little used in American English. (Why that is, however, I have no idea.)

In any case, it is all bullshit. Those places are not, and are not in any relevant respect like, small towns, or villages, and the virtues and advantages of small-town/village life are much exaggerated anyway.

3

Harmony, CA is a small town. Population 18.

ETA: There’s also Dogtown, CA, population [del]30[/del] [del]31[/del] [del]32[/del] 33.

4

I don’t know that I’d say it’s always positive - people say Columbia (SC) is a “small town” but what they mean is that everybody knows your business, the same hundred people run everything and they all go to the same church, and that you’ll run into them in the liquor store.

5

I can say with some satisfaction that nobody claims San Juan (pop of city proper 400K) is a small town. Mostly because then someone would have to be personally responsible and we can’t have that.:wink:

Hmmm… yes, that is something to worry about on the dark side of “smalltownness”. And it can also mean that whoever is coining the “small town” claim is viewing only a particular* part* of the conurbation and its population - and only their activities and interests - as being the “real” Whateverburg.

6

Re: San Antonio, Texas: Most of the residents and long-timers have a small-town attitude.

Off the top of my head, I can think of these “small-town” behaviors frequently done by San Antonians: say hello to the clerk, cashier, bus driver. Greet people when entering an elevator. Play with little kids belonging to strangers when out in public. Allow strangers to play with your kids. Drop whatever you’re doing to help guide a lost tourist. Make change for anyone who asks. Hold doors open for people. Thank people for holding open a door.

ETA: I was confused when I visited New Orleans that my greetings to bus drivers and service people were stonily ignored. Oh well, I guess they were too busy letting the good times roll. :smiley:

7

njtt, I think of “small town” and “village” as being basically synonymous, with the exception that “village” is more often co-opted by urban and suburban developers (it’s common for a housing development to be officially named “such-and-such village”). Is there some other distinction you see between the two?

8

It’s definitely not positive for me, as I observe that San Diego is a big city with a small-town mentality–a willfully self-imposed, small-town mentality. (That’s why I fled the place once I turned 18.) The problem is that it definitely is not a small town, in terms of demographics and industry. It just refuses to “grow up” culturally.

9

Yes, villages (as the word is used in the UK) are a lot smaller, small enough that it can actually be true that almost everybody (and not just the people who are, or who think they are, important) knows almost everybody else. That is not really true in anything big enough to be called a town.

I agree that “small town” and “village” are basically synonymous in American English, with the caveat you mention, and the further caveat that Americans, in my experience, rarely use the word “village” at all in its original sense, at least, not of any settlement in the USA itself (no doubt Americans think of England as having villages). They use “small town” instead.

In Britain, somewhere like Harmony, CA (mentioned in post #3 - and I have been there, and considered mentioning it myself) would never be called a town, even in jest. (Indeed, it is not even a village. It is a hamlet at best.) In America it does get called a town, even though that is recognized as being rather absurd.

10

I’ve heard people from my hometown Perth (the Australian one) say that they live in the small town. Perth has 1.7 million residents.

11

Why would that be recognized as absurd? I think the point is that “town” in American English covers anything smaller than a major metropolitan conurbation. We just don’t make fine distinctions between towns, small towns, villages, and hamlets.

And there is another issue in the United States, in that state law often defines these terms in a political/administrative sense.

For example, in Virginia, you have counties, cities, and towns. Towns are municipalities that are included in the surrounding county and cities are municipalities that are excluded from the surrounding county.

In Ohio, there are counties, townships, villages, and cities. There are no municipalities excluded from the surrounding county. All “unincorporated” areas as part of a township. All incorporated municipalities start as villages and automatically become cities when their population reaches 5,000.

These are official government terms and don’t reflect the unofficial uses of the term “town,” which, as has been noted, has a wider scope than in British English.

12

Generally speaking you’d be more likely to hear the reverse in Australia - small town X is almost like a big city. For the most part, cities are seen as more attractive than small towns.

13

To further confuse things…in much of the U.S., particularly in the western states that use the county system, many small towns, villages, hamlets etc. are officially cities. Some states make special provision for formal organization of “towns” “villages” etc. and what most would call “hamlets” are known as “unincorporated communities”. But in most western states, if a place has a formal structure it’s a “city”, no matter what the population. E.g., my home town is a city, with a mayor, city council, city clerk/treasurer, etc. and it has a total population of 150.

14

I think those official governmental terms might be why “town” and “village” and such have such a broad meaning in the US. Because while nearly every state (and the federal government, for some purposes) has official definitions for these terms, the official definitions aren’t all the same. I wouldn’t be surprised, for instance, if there were some state where a “village” is officially larger than a “town”, or one where the distinctions are completely independent of size. Given a wide disparity in official meanings, it’s no surprise that there’s a similar disparity in unofficial meanings, too.

15

These places (Miami, San Diego, Phoenix) are NOT small towns. The very thought to me is rather absurd. Just because you’re smaller than New York City or some such doesn’t make you small. I live in what I’d call a small town (pop. 15,000) (however it could be argued to be a “village” even though, as previously mentioned, Americans rarely ever use that term). I guarantee you Miami is nothing like where I live, or anything like larger towns around me with populations nearing 100,000.

To me, anything with a pop above 100,000+ I’d call a city. Anything above 1 million a large city, and anything below 100,000 a town, and anything below 25,000 a small town.

16

The difference between “village” and “town” is that natives live in villages, while settlers found towns. That’s why the UK has villages, the U.S. has towns, and Israel has Arab villages and Jewish towns.

17

Some neighborhoods in large urban cities can have a small town feel. Or at least they used to. I think Americans of all stripes used to be much move involved in their communities than they are now.

18

There’s just not much distinction between town and city in modern times.

Take Detroit (please, take Detroit), it’s the Motor City, but then Motor City also gets shortened to Motown.

19

You don’t think Americans would recognize that it is a bit absurd to call a place with a nominal population of 18 a town? OK, if you say so. I guess Americans are dumber and more humorless than I thought, then.

Indeed. That is the point I was making.

20

If that’s your point, then it directly contradicts your assessment that it requires being dumb or humorless to not consider ridiculous calling that place with a population of 18 a town. Under the definition you yourself say is the point of your comments, of course it’s a town. That’s what a town is.