No Stupid Questions

Just wait until you find out about townships.

Like a town population 500 or less not within a hour drive of a city.

I live in Nebraska grew up in a village of 30 people, went to school in a town of 2500. Live currently in a town of 300.

Edit - since I received some upvotes and I'm no longer at my daughter's softball game. I wanted to add when I was in school 30 some years ago, my geography teacher told us Nebraska actually didn't have towns due to population requirements that there wasn't one that actually defined a town, it's was technically city or village. Whether that's still true or not I have no idea.

Your definition of village is the equivalent of a rural town in the US.

Caveat: none of these are formal definitions. This is what I am thinking of when using or hearing these terms.

I wouldn't call it an "urban" area unless I can see a privately-owned 4+ story building with an elevator. Government buildings don't count: they might be the sole example of a 4+ story building within 50 miles. Partial elevator access (intended for handicap compliance to the lower floors) doesn't count.

"Suburban" extends from the limits of the urban area, out to where the farms or forests are larger than 100 acres. Suburban areas are primarily comprised of single family homes, but you may also find 1-3 floor apartment complexes.

"Rural" is anywhere outside of both urban and suburban areas.

A commercial or mixed commercial/residential area - that isn't large or congested enough to be considered an "urban" area on its own - would be a "town". A "rural town" would be a town not connected to a suburban or urban area: you can't get to a city without passing large farms or forests.

A town won't have its own police force. They will rely on the county sheriff's department for law enforcement activity. Once it is large enough to have its own police, it becomes a "city".

In my area, a "village" is a town populated exclusively by people with twice the median income.

Lived in Sidney, NE when I was super young. Population 6,000 and ain't shit around it but corn, missile silos, I-80, and the occasional train derailment.

Holliday, mo. when I lived there the population was 300. but I only ever saw ten people. I commuted to work in Columbia.

"urban" means city, not town

I recently passed through Maple Creek, CA. It’s a rural “town” that as far as I could tell a schoolhouse and a firehouse.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Rb5Tqt6Y75GHTkFJ9?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy

The closest city is 30mins away and even that only has a population of 1000.

Poor OP. They're leaving this thread more confused than ever.

The United States is huge and every region has different definitions and expectations of "city", "town", "suburb", "wide place in the road", etc. LOL, when I was a kid we called Tulsa, OK a "small town". Well, yeah, as opposed to Chicagoland.

You won't find anything definitive, but we don't use the word "village" except to connote... well, I can't really say. But I know one when I see it!

This is a typical American rural town:

This is a typical American city:

^((That took less than 3 minutes to find and link))

WTF is a lorry? They look a lot like trucks to me.

How many dollar stores are required for it to be classified as a town?

On paper sure they are villages, but I think a US village and one from elsewhere would likely feel drastically different. Lacking actual community (see Bowling Alone), or just look at all of the things that the village lost (shops, train station, industry etc) and what it still has(franchise dollar store, gas station etc).

It could just be coincidence, though "retirement village" is a term (also ecovillages) so maybe not. Aside from decay, I'd imagine the common perspective of blink-and-you'll-miss-it (unless you stop for gas/maybe breakfast) probably doesn't help with image either.

An American Small Town sounds a lot like your village.

But, we have like 10,000x as much space to spread out in, so we can have these villages every 10 miles or so in every direction. You could easily drive for 24 hours across the country and easily avoid all major cities.

They're still cities, but people tend to start calling them "rural" when you get a certain distance from the big cities and things spread out, often also near farmland and/or nature.

For example, this would probably count as rural.

A small town would be a village in the UK. But because we're big tough MURICAN people we can't just call it that cuz who knows? Like you said, it would be a few thousand people living a slightly inconvenient distance from a larger urban area.

I used to live in the state of Georgia. In South Georgia there were 2 big towns. I'd go so far as to call them decently sized Cities. Albany and Valdosta. And scattered all over the place are smaller towns like Baconton for instance. Baconton would barely qualify as a small town. The biggest attraction was a small grocery store on the side of I-75.

A town in the USA has a population requirement of at least 5,000 people. However that can be spread out over hundreds or even thousands of square miles.

Villages do exist (I live in one) and it is generally defined as a smaller incorporated entity within a town.

So, for instance, I live in the country of the USA, in the state of New York, in the county of Allegany, in the Town of Andover, in the Village of Andover. It's like nesting dolls of government and taxes.

It means the town doesn't have a Walmart

Most towns are not urban by any standard. I ate dinner over the weekend in a town with a population of 669. It was big enough to have its own restaurant and post office. It was a 30-40 minute drive from any town with a population over 10,000 (and that, just barely).

Here are some descriptions and photos of what most small towns look like: https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/trip-ideas/washington/slow-paced-towns-in-wa

A really small town is like what you're calling a village. I think most people outside the US think that rural is closer to urban areas than it usually is. It typically starts a half hour outside a major city and then can be 7-10 hours to the next major city depending on what state you're in. The upper east coast is probably closer to Europe. Rural encompasses a huge swath of the US land, and most are very isolated physically and mentally.

Here is a map showing the population densities by county: https://irjci.blogspot.com/2020/08/census-bureau-to-end-counting-efforts.html

Aight, so, we got cities/metropolitan areas, then we have the outer edge of cities called suburbs (could also be referred to as towns), then we got further out areas, which are rural, which have a lot of agriculture and wilderness.

"Small" and "rural" are used as qualifying adjectives, and typically compound. Rural: generally far from near by cities, lots of wilderness/agriculture around. Small: not a lot of residents or amenities.

Village is not a term that is commonly used, at least not where I'm from (midwest).

Your village is our small rural town: low population density, lots of wilderness/agriculture, not a lot of buildings.

This guy has a YouTube channel of him just driving around small towns in the rural Midwest USA. https://youtube.com/@joeandnicsroadtrip

There are named towns in the US with populations in the single digits. This can be due to either the population moving away, fleeing, or simply dying off over time -- Centralia, PA leaps to mind -- or because it's just a cluster of a couple of houses at a crossroads that would otherwise be in the middle of nowhere. There may not necessarily be a post office or any other services there.

In fact, there are "towns" in the US in that they are named on the map and have a defined location filed with the state/county/Postal Service, but they have no inhabitants at all. In many cases this is because a planned development never actually happened.

There are towns that are entirely just housing developments with no stores, no services, and no schools for miles. We are extremely spread out and even a town of a couple thousand people can have nothing nearby. These are what I've always known as "rural" towns. Farming communities and suburbs entirely cut off from the bigger cities by miles of just empty fields and farm land, in addition to places like up around Mariposa with populations of sub 100 people, cut off more by the mountainous terrain than because of how the infrastructure was built up.

My uncle lives up in Omak

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omak,_Washington

This is a small town. We don't call them villages, we call them towns for some reason.

Technically speaking, Omak is a city actually. But pretty much everyone will call it a town around here.

Rural usually means Hillbillies.