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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5892 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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Note that the UN definitions place the thresholds for "city" at 50,000 people, "town" at 5000, and "village" at 500. (And my aforementioned "mega-city" starts at 500,000.)

This is even worse, especially in New Jersey, where we've got weird stuff like Metutchen (pop 15,000) entirely surrounded by Edison (pop 110,000). Edison is just dense suburbia.

To clarify, both UN and US definitions operate on density-based "urban areas" rather than on legal boundaries.

Someone made maps for that here. This makes a large part of the NY metro area one enormous city of 14M. Edison is near the bottom left but I can't tell for sure if it's in or out. Might be useful for some purposes but definitely doesn't map to what Americans would consider 'a city'. (Then again, NYC itself doesn't either)

Someone made maps for that here.

The official UN maps are here (includes basemap with labels) and here (includes per-city information pop-ups). The official US map is here.

Edison is near the bottom left but I can't tell for sure if it's in or out.

It's in, right on the edge.

I prefer the UK system, where the rules are made up and, on the basis of fairness, Wales gets an automatic city for each Jubilee. Unfortunately, they realized they also needed a more sensible taxonomy, which does ruin the fun a bit.

I get why they would, because other definitions are fuzzy and open to interpretations, even though in practice most people I know can tell which one a place is by looking at what its core looks like.

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