For a search thing I’m tasked with designing, I’m having to consider the notion of when does a UK ‘town’ become a ‘city’.
It’s a woefully imprecise thing, so if one is to use those terms there has to be a clear but arbitrary threshold.
For me, Eurostat’s threshold of >= 50,000 urban inhabitants feels too low:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/cities/methodology
I know where I’d be inclined to put the break point (for the UK), but where would you place it?
@urlyman In #England, specifically, a town only becomes a city when it acquires an Anglican cathedral church & a bishop to go with it, which also implies an Anglican diocese. Roman Catholic cathedrals don't count. So, Peterborough (Anglican cathedral) is a city, but Northampton (RC one) isn't. Peterborough's population is ~216,000, whilst Northampton's is ~249,000. Religious discrimination? It would appear so.
@rmblaber1956 I think it’s nonsense. I’m entirely disinterested in whether a place has a cathedral or not, unless I’m wanting to visit a cathedral
@urlyman Point taken. I was merely referring to what an English town needs to qualify as a city, & that is an Anglican cathedral - so lots of English "cities" have smaller populations than towns, merely because they've got cathedrals, & the towns don't. And yes, it IS a nonsense, on stilts!
@urlyman Cities in the UK are well defined, but not based on population. There are plenty of large towns which are larger than small cities.
I assume you're looking for some alternative definition of "city" rather than the official one?
@statsguy Yes. In my context, the term is envisaged as a proxy for ‘big, interesting place’ without having to say “Over X,000”.
Re your example, exactly my point!
@urlyman And I did not know this until I looked it up just now, but our smallest city is St David's, with a population of just 1751 at the last census
@statsguy yes, and, for example, Kidlington, with a population of ~13,000, is a village
@urlyman I was once riding my bike through Kidlington and the frame broke. Maybe that was something to do with the mystical powers of being an oversized village.
@urlyman But anyway, I agree that 50K population seems on the small size for a threshold. Though even that that threshold you'd be excluding quite a few bona fide cities, such as Salisbury, Winchester, Lancaster, Inverness, and Durham.
100K at least has the merit of being a nice round number.
