Thursday, January 29, 2009
Hamlets to Villages To Towns to Cities
Across the known world, there is no universal literal definition of a village, town, or city. It is most often a designation assigned by the people of a place, and often has little to no bearing on population, geographic size, or facilities. For example, Sherwood Park is still classified as a hamlet, the same as the 600 person locale my mother taught band class in, and it counts 50 000 individuals inside its borders. Historically, the presence of a chapel transformed one's humble hamlet or village into a town, and a cathedral elevated one to city status. But, such definitions fall short as communities increasingly stop defining themselves around a common faith, so one finds oneself needing a new paradigm to benchmark these characteristics, or even begin to discard them completely. Edmonton can, with reasonable faith, call itself a city, a city of champions even, but what defines that? Hopefully, not just numbers or the presence of a hospital.
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Very interesting, Mike. It's like how my hometown of about 10,000 people officially became a "city" for some reason. Instead of basing it on whether we had a chapel or cathedral, we liked to think it was because of the arrival of McDonald's, Tim Horton's, and Pizza Hut. The addition of those restaurants in the same year we became a city just seemed to go hand in hand.
ReplyDeleteYou raise an interesting topic about the events that characterize urban growth and the "promotions"- if you will- of those centres into something bigger, a town, a city, a metropolis. I also liked how Court said that the official promotion of her hometown to a city coincided with the addition of various capitalist chains. Do these places, whether they be restaurants, chapels, hospitals, etc. actually characterize and record growth? Should they be allowed this power?
ReplyDeleteI always thought those definitions were based on population. The way that I grew up in The Village of Holden which had about 500 people, and Ryley the town about 15 minutes away was called a town becuase the population was slightly larger. But I've never really thought about the classifications...
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