Urbanity is a continuum with no clear population threshold

Evidence

In modern times, the question is almost meaningless. Ease of travel, suburbanization, and metropolitanization have blurred the distinctions between small settlements and large cities. And the enormity of the world’s great cities has distorted our capacity to make these distinctions, even where they are not blurred. “I was raised in a small town,” says the contemporary urbanite. “It had a population of only 50,000.” But even considered from a historical perspective, from the perspective of a period when human settlements were more clearly separated by time and space, the question is difficult to answer. We are dealing here with a continuum, and while the extremes of a continuum are always clear cut, its middle points are notoriously hazy. I shall, therefore, have to be arbitrary. I shall say that once the population of the settlement reaches 8,000 to 10,000 persons, the transition to city has occurred. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 79

Categorization

• CANDY: An 8,000-to-10,000 person cutoff for ‘city’ and the 50,000-person ‘small town’ are fun, quotable thresholds for cocktail conversation.