Historically, settled places felt like cities at far smaller sizes than today’s standards

Evidence

London, in the twelfth century, for example, had an estimated population of between 20,000 and 35,000 (Comhaire and Cahnman, 1962), by today’s jaundiced standards a mere village-hardly worth going out of one’s way to see. But to a visitor of the period, it appeared quite a metropolis indeed and well worth the time and trouble it took to get there (Holmes, 1966). — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 81

Categorization

• CANDY: A light, conversational fact: twelfth-century London at 20-35k was a thrilling metropolis to contemporaries though it reads as a village to us.