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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7041 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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Not in American usage. Rural town means it's not part of a larger metro, or at least not connected to it/too far for reasonable commuting. America would use the term 'farm town' for what you're envisioning(which may not be a town), a 'rural town' might be supported by tourism, mining, a single large employer, etc. A major city is something with suburbs and a suburb is attached to a major city(but may or may not have a population that commutes there for work; some suburbs have more people commuting in from the city than out to the city) and an exurb is a town detached from the major city but economically dependent on a large portion of its population commuting there. A 'village' sounds like something thirdworlders live in.

Not in American usage. Rural town means it's not part of a larger metro, or at least not connected to it/too far for reasonable commuting. America would use the term 'farm town' for what you're envisioning(which may not be a town), a 'rural town' might be supported by tourism, mining, a single large employer, etc.

It probably has something to do with American farming patterns and pervasive automobilization. To me a large employer like a mine or a factory automatically means "urban", because people will start settling next to it, and supporting businesses will follow. And the fewer households have cars, the more the town will need more of these local businesses to function.

In my state, towns and cities are incorporated; villages are not. There are some very affluent villages that are filled with people who just don’t want to mess with another layer of government.

And incorporated or not, all of these community types can be a "suburb" in the legal sense - the legal definition of a suburb, which is simple and useful and should be retained even if we have an alternative definition based on urban form, is a municipality that isn't the core of it's metro area.

A 'village' sounds like something thirdworlders live in.

I grew up in a farming town in the fly over states. We had a both a "Town of Bumfuckville" and a "Village of Bumfuckville" as two separate incorporated municipalities. The town was technically the larger outlying land, and the village was the area around the main-street, the branches, and a few of the neighborhoods surrounding it. No clue why it incorporated like that, but while they were technically distinct legal municipalities they did play together (along with other towns) for the school district.

No clue why it incorporated like that

It's practically a tradition in some parts of the country. (Pennsylvania townships are incorporated, unlike townships in some other states.)

NJ townships are also incorporated (and are by far the most common form of municipal government), but a few of the borough/township splits have joined in the past few years, notably Princeton (home of the eponymous university)

Oh that's hilarious. Is there a technical distinction between a Township and a Town?

It appears not.

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