# What do you consider a small town?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [September 12, 2022, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406 "2022-09-12T00:11:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/21 "2022-09-12T12:05:52Z")
I lived in a town/city of 25k. I thought of it as a small city. It had a tiny Home Depot and everything. Of course, it likely FELT larger b/c it was the county seat, and all the folk from the REALLY small towns all around came in “to town”. So, to some extent, it depends on location, and what else is around.
But I’d call 10k a “town”, and smaller than that, a small town. Another part depends on what it has in terms of store, schools, amenities, and whether it is vital or declining.
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### Author:  [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/22 "2022-09-12T12:12:16Z")
I care more about how the entity relates to the nearby area than the number of residents. Is it a suburb in a swath of suburbia? Then it’s not really a small town, even if it’s legal structure is “town”. I’d it is own thing, with nothing more important within an easy commute? Then it might be a small town. Or a city.
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### Author:  [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/23 "2022-09-12T12:46:04Z")
I’d consider a supposed community that is actually adjacent to a city but with no services of its own to be part of that city even if it is not, technically.
If it weren’t for the “bus” criteria, I would be in a conundrum regarding the place I live, which has hundreds of thousand of people in the area, and is not adjacent to a larger metro area, but whose downtown area is the same size as the 20,000 population town I grew up in. It does have its own bus system, however (along with slightly more event halls). If it didn’t have its own bus system, I’d probably consider it simply a large town despite its huge size.
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### Author:  [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/24 "2022-09-12T13:33:22Z")
I was with my family visiting a place with about 10,000 people. I thought of that as a town, but not a small town, which I would consider 1,000 people or so. I think of villages as even less than that.
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### Author:  [@maxlakonsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maxlakonsky)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/25 "2022-09-12T14:07:07Z")
I grew up in a small town and I always considered it a town with a population of less than 10,000 people. Personally, I like the idea of a small town because it feels more intimate and everyone seems to know each other. Another plus is that there are usually less criminals in smaller towns. I feel like people in small towns are also more likely to help their neighbors out.
As author says about [growing up in a big city & small town](https://assignbuster.com/growing-up-in-a-big-city-and-growing-up-in-a-small-town-or-village/) ‘‘All you neighbors are your most trusted friends… The key is to appreciate them and find a way of turning a negative situation into a positive situation’’
However, some people might not enjoy living in a small town because there aren’t as many job opportunities and the nightlife is pretty much non-existent. It really depends on the person’s preferences. Some people might consider a town with a population of 50,000 to be small, while others might only consider a town with a population of 5,000 to be small. The choice is there for us to make, and it depends very much of our character, free time, friends and family and other.
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### Author:  [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/26 "2022-09-12T14:23:28Z")
Under 10,000 people qualifies as a small town for me. I lived for several years in a town in South Dakota that was barely over 10K population, and is 11K+ now (Wikipedia refers to it as a “city”).
My current mailing address is a Kentucky metropolis with 18K+ population, which I think of as a small city, though otherwise in my arbitrary calculation, a city should have at least 20K people. We do have a sizable commercial strip (the “bypass”). Life largely revolves around the bypass, unless you have city hall or court business, or need to go to the post office.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/27 "2022-09-12T14:47:08Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#):
>
> 1000 is not even a town but a village or something.
Technically, at least in New York State, nearly everything people think of as a “town” is a village. And everything people think of as “out in the country” is in a town. The whole state’s divided up into towns, except for the major cities.
10,000’s kind of up there for what I think of as a small town; I’d think of that as a large town. But 1000 is for me too small for the cutoff; so I voted 10,000. I’m not sure just where I’d put the cutoff – somewhere between 3K and 7500 depending on the feel of the place, maybe?
> [@penultima\_thule](#):
>
> I think in the Australian context the distinction between a village or hamlet and a small town is that a town has all the facilities. It has a town hall, a bank, a club, a post office, a primary and a secondary school, an outlet for government services, a service station, a hospital/hospice, a cemetery.
A hospital? You have hospitals for a town as small as 1000? I’m envious. There are lots of small and even what I’d call medium towns around here that have no hospital; there may or may not be a clinic with limited hours and facilities. Or an “outlet for government services”, either, unless you count the post office – other government services are probably at the county seat, in rural New York, and the county may have a dozen towns/townships and that many or more incorporated villages. – the county seat itself may qualify as a “small town” to a lot of people, though.
A hamlet, around here, is a handful of houses that may have once had multiple stores but now has maybe one or none at all; and probably lost its post office years ago if it ever had one, though some of the hamlets have hung on to theirs.
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#):
>
> I live in one of the most densely populated zip codes in the US (more than 125,000 people per square mile) so 50,000 in a whole town seems tiny.
That’s more than my entire county.
> [@AHunter3](#):
>
> Around here “town” does not mean “municipal built-up area surrounded by less built-up countryside”. A town is basically a sub-county. All the counties are broken up into towns the same way the state is broken up into counties. (The exception is CITIES. A City is not a town nor is it within a town). Towns contains villages and hamlets which are more like what folks in many other states probably think of as towns
That’s true here, but everybody calls the villages “towns” anyway, a lot of the time. People will say “I’m going into town” or “I live in town” or “what’s the nearest town with a \_\_\_\_” when they mean “village” or “small city”.
I once had a short argument with somebody who said they didn’t need to worry about the zoning where they were because they didn’t live “in town”. I was unable to convince them that they did so live in a town, even though they didn’t live in a village or city; and gave up. They probably found out eventually when the code enforcement officer showed up.
> [@AHunter3](#):
>
> Our town, North Hempstead, has 237,000 people in it, an impressively large one.
I’d consider that a city, even if not legally incorporated as one.
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### Author:  [@Nars\_Glinley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nars_Glinley)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/28 "2022-09-12T15:01:33Z")
Do most Americans even use the word “village”? I know of a few places that have “Village” in their name but other than that, I’d never use the word.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/29 "2022-09-12T15:09:32Z")
> [@Nars\_Glinley](#):
>
> Do most Americans even use the word “village”?
Hmmm. I was going to say ‘we use it all the time’ but it occurs to me that most of the uses I can think of are as part of the name of a place – the Village of X or Y; or in the form of “Village Hall” or something similar. I’m trying to think whether I’ve heard people say “I’m going into the village” and just not paid attention. People do talk about “village taxes” which are distinct from town taxes – if you own property in the village, you pay both; if you own property in the town but not in the village, you only pay the town taxes; I’ve certainly heard/seen people say “I live (or don’t live) in the village” in that context.
– the word “village” is now starting to look weird to me. Maybe I’d better go do something else before the word “town” starts to also.
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### Author:  [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/30 "2022-09-12T15:12:37Z")
For my area, a Village is usually part of a Township or Borough.
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/31 "2022-09-12T15:24:32Z")
> [@Nars\_Glinley](#):
>
> Do most Americans even use the word “village”?
My suspicion is that, while “village” is frequently used as a formal/legal definition and naming convention for certain kinds of municipalities in the U.S. (and that also likely varies a lot by state and region), the word isn’t often used in casual conversation.
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### Author:  [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/32 "2022-09-12T15:41:51Z")
I think that’s because there are really two meanings for both “town” and “village”. One is the political division - there’s a Town of Catskill and a Village of Catskill within that town but they are two different entities and if you live in the village you pay taxes to both but even if you live in the village you have to get a marriage license from the town clerk, not the village clerk.
But there’s another meaning for town, the sense in which I’ve heard people say they’re “going to town”, meaning they are driving from their home in a rural or suburban area ( which is very likely within a town) to a commercial area (which might be a city) or they live “in town” meaning they live in the built-up part of a town or village or even city. There’s a sense of “village” that doesn’t refer to a political entity , but doesn’t seem to be used for actual, contemporary locations - it’s either used for fictional places ( like in _Beauty and the Beast)_ or historical references to an “18th century village” or something similar.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/33 "2022-09-12T15:58:05Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#):
>
> > [@Nars\_Glinley](#):
> >
> > Do most Americans even use the word “village”?
>
> My suspicion is that, while “village” is frequently used as a formal/legal definition and naming convention for certain kinds of municipalities in the U.S. (and that also likely varies a lot by state and region), the word isn’t often used in casual conversation.
In my experience, “village” is a common word (and it shows up fairly often in expressions like “it takes a village” or “village idiot”), but it’s not common to refer to a specific place as a village.
On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “hamlet” except when discussing Shakespeare.
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/34 "2022-09-12T16:00:33Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> In my experience, “village” is a common word (and it shows up fairly often in expressions like “it takes a village” or “village idiot”), but it’s not common to refer to a specific place as a village.
Agreed; I was thinking more about using the word, on its own, specifically to refer to a municipality, rather than as part of an often-used phrase or expression.
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### Author:  [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/35 "2022-09-12T16:05:29Z")
> [@FinsToTheLeft](#):
>
> The town is big enough to have a Wal-mart and Home Depot, **but only one high school**.
This, more than population, is what make me think “small town”. They only have one of “things”. One high school, one arena, one community center, one library, one grocery store, one movie theater, that kind of thing. Where if someone tells you _what_ they’re doing, you automatically also know _where_ they are.
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### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/36 "2022-09-12T16:06:31Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#):
>
> 1000 is not even a town but a village or something.
My nearest town has a population of 1400. It’s a town, dammit
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/37 "2022-09-12T16:08:18Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#):
>
> I was thinking more about using the word, on its own, specifically to refer to a municipality, rather than as part of an often-used phrase or expression.
I do that sometimes – not in the ‘going into town’ sense; but I do a couple of farmers’ markets that set up on village property, and I’ll say ‘we need to notify the village of our opening date’ or ‘we’d have to ask the village’s permission for that’ or ‘the village moved us over here, if you want us back in the previous location (also on village property) you’ll have to talk to the village about that’.
But that’s all referring to the specific village under discussion; though it isn’t usually necessary to attach the village name as it’s obvious which one we’re talking about.
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/38 "2022-09-12T16:10:56Z")
0-10,000 - small town.
10,001- 15,000- medium town
15,001 - 25,000 - large town
25,001- 50,000 - small city
50,001 - 100,000 - medium city
100,000- 250,000 - large city
250,000+ - huge city
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/39 "2022-09-12T16:15:39Z")
I live in what is called in New England a town but is more like a hamlet. It has a post office, library, town hall, elementary school, a volunteer fire station, a police station with I believe one policeman, one bar, and a cafe/general store/gas station. 1900 people. But since “towns” here are actually subdivisions of counties – there is no unincorporated area in a county – almost all of my town is farms and forests and scattered rural homes. I’m fifteen to twenty minutes away from the next towns in any direction, all of which are of similar size (most are somewhat bigger). Serious shopping is 25 to 30 minutes away in what I would call real towns, 17K and 28K respectively. They are the ones with the bookstores, the farm supply, the grocery co-op, speaking of where I might shop.
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### Author:  [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2022, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-consider-a-small-town/971406/40 "2022-09-12T16:17:50Z")
Voted under 10K but in my imagination a “small” town would be less. I think my yardstick might be more a measure of how many blocks the main street business district consists of. If I can walk around the downtown area in 30-40 minutes or less it qualifies as a small town in my book.
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