Towns

A town is a densely populated urban area or a settlement that is typically smaller than a city and larger than a village. It is made up of local powers of government and usually has a fixed boundary and consists of a group of houses or dwellings with shops, schools, and several different businesses.

The word tun which means an area of land enclosed by walls or a fence was an Old English word that came from native Germanic origin.

The Norse or Norwegian word tun, the Dutch word tuin, and the German word zaun are all related to the word town. It appears the German word zaun which means some type of fence of any material comes closest to the original meaning of the word.

The space that these fences enclosed became the sense of the meaning of the word town with the English and the Dutch.

The difference between a town and a village, hamlet, or township is their economic structure in that a town's population usually make their living from manufacturing industry, commerce, and public service where as the others are often dependent on a primary industry such as agriculture or related activities.

Today the definition of towns is complicated because of large suburban growth, migration of city people to villages, and satellite urban developments that have created communities that are urban economically and culturally but lack other characteristics of an urban locality.

Towns usually have legally defined borders and operate as a distinct government unit with some if not all the functions of local government. These types of towns are said to be incorporated in the United States and those that are not self governed are said to be unincorporated.

Sometimes because of politics or the approach adopted a definition between a city and a town is not uniform. Such an example would be an administrative entity which has been granted city status but has a smaller population than a town which is considered to be an urban place of fewer than 100,000 people by some today.

Today there are many officially designated cities that have a much smaller population than 100,000 people.

The status or definition of a town can change from one country to another and from one state to another.