Commons:Categories for discussion/2024/06/Category:Populated places by type

Category:Populated places by type

While there is a pseudo-consensus on certain types of populated places (cities, towns, villages), it is becoming clear that we should establish a more rigid consensus for several types of populated places. My proposal for populated places is the following:

• Populated places – places where people live, permanently or temporarily.
  • Settlements – places where people live permanently, typically an administrative unit.
    • Urban settlements – high-density settlements.
      • Cities – main type of urban settlements, usually of high importance or population.
        • Megacities – urban agglomerations with population over 10 million.
        • Million cities – urban settlements with population over 1 million.
      • Towns type of urban settlements, usually of lower population than cities.
    • Villages – low-density settlements.
      • Hamlets – villages with low population.
  • Temporary populated places – places where people live temporarily.
  • Urban areas – areas with high density, usually a cluster of urban settlements.
    • Megalopolises – cluster of interconnected urban settlements separated by rural areas.
    • Urban agglomerations – cluster of contiguous urban settlements.
      • Conurbations – cluster of urban settlements without a definitive core city.
      • Megacities – urban agglomerations with population over 10 million.
      • Metropolitan areas – urban areas (or any clusters of settlements) with population over a million.
    • Urban settlements – see above.

While many countries have a clear distinction between cities and towns, some countries don't have such distinctions in English. For those cases, we may use "cities" for any urban settlements, and categories named "towns" or "urban settlements" would redirect to cities. The city-related or "urban" topics may be categorized under "cities", since it is the main type of urban settlements in Commons. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 14:12, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I had originally intended to categorize towns under cities to avoid the Category:Urban settlements category and because of the fact that we treat Category:Cities as the main category for urban settlements of any size. However, there are countries like the United Kingdom where the logic is opposite. In the United Kingdom, the generic term of urban settlements is "towns", and "cities" are towns with the royal right to use the title "city" in their names (like the City of Manchester). So I have decided to keep cities and towns separate with a common Category:Urban settlements category, which was originally used as a designation of certain Soviet-era settlements. I have created a separate category for the designation at Category:Urban-type settlements. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 14:21, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Category:Metropolitan areas presumably belongs in there somewhere, as do Category:Unincorporated communities and Category:Municipalities.

Expanding on your remark about the UK: in several countries (and U.S. states, each of which has its own laws about this), not just the UK, "city", "town", etc. have legal meanings that have nothing to do with population. Thus, Republic, Washington, population 992, is a "city"; Bridlington in Yorkshire, England, population 35,264, is a "town"; Freeport, New York, population 44,472, is a "village", and forms part of the Town of Hempstead, New York, population 793,409. - Jmabel ! talk 17:11, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I would be very hesitant to sacrifice legally defined terms for our own terminology based on connotations. If we want a category that is about population as such, then give it a name that says as much, not one with a precise legal meaning.

Also: are these population-based categories based only on present-day population? Consider Detroit, which had nearly 2 million people in the 1950s, but less than 700,000 today. - Jmabel ! talk 17:22, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

In any case, I think "by type" and "by size" are different. - Jmabel ! talk 17:25, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

None of the categories I have listed are based on population, except Category:Million cities and Category:Megacities. I have not given any precise definations for Category:Cities and Category:Towns due to having legal connotations in many countries. Category:Urban settlements don't have such legal connotations and it can be used. Yes, the population-based categories are based on present-day population of cities, especially the urban population. Although Detroit's population is less than 700,000 today, its urban population is more than 3.7 million. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 18:32, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Wouldn't the larger population relate more to Category:Metropolitan areas than to the City of Detroit? - Jmabel ! talk 20:54, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, we tend to use urban population while categorizing megacities and million cities instead of the population within city limits, which can be often contradictory. Instead, we should consider only the population within the city limits, unless we are dealing with Chinese cities. For Chinese cities, we should consider the urban population since their city limits often cover vast rural areas. In that respect, we won't categorize Detroit as a million city but as a "former million city". Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 06:19, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

An alternative method is to define Category:Megacities as clusters of urban settlements instead of individual cities, which is much better. For that case, the category will usually categorize the respective urban areas instead of their core cities. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 06:52, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

 Comment I have redefined Category:Megacities as urban agglomerations with population over 10 million, which is the definition used in Wikipedia. Category:Million cities is still defined as urban settlements above a million, because we already have Category:Metropolitan areas for urban areas (or any clusters of settlements) with population over a million. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 07:00, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

• Support proposed schema. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:26, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

•  Comment I have tagged Cities, Towns, and Villages for more inputs. Also, Categories by city may continue to be used for populated places of any type, unless we have specific categories for those types. Not only that, Cities by population can be used to list large towns that are not classified as cities. I'm creating unambiguous city-by-population categories to list cities by population, since it is a very common way to list cities. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 03:10, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

•  Comment I have reincluded Megacities under Cities by population, since megacities are also considered as cities in global statistics. While the term "city" has legal connotations in respective countries, such connotations should be applicable for the subcats of Cities by country only. Otherwise, we can call any urban settlement a "city" as long as the context is clear. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 03:58, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

If you just define these terms in population size, then I would personally consider that the same term may have different meanings in different cultures, especially in non-English speaking countries and regions. To take an example, "村" was being translated as "village", but "里" was also being translated as "village". For Taiwan, they are all used as administrative subdivisions by the government. "Villages – low-density settlements" this definition is obviously not suitable for Taiwan.--125.230.64.49 17:19, 28 June 2024 (UTC)