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A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size definition for what constitutes a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world. == Origin and use == The word town shares an origin with the German word ''Stadt'', the Dutch word ''tuin'', and the Old Norse ''tun''. The German word ''Zaun'' comes closest to the original meaning of the word: a fence of any material. An early borrowing from Celtic *dunom (cf. Old Irish dun, Welsh din "fortress, fortified place, camp," dinas "city;" In English and Dutch, the meaning of the word took on the sense of the space which these fences enclosed. In England, a town was a small city that could not afford or was not allowed to build walls or other larger fortifications, and built a palisade or stockade instead. In the Netherlands, this space was a garden, more specifically those of the wealthy, which had a high fence or a wall around them (like the garden of palace Het Loo in Apeldoorn, which was the example for the privy garden of William and Mary at Hampton Court). In Old Norse ''tun'' means a (grassy) place between farmhouses, and is still used in a similar meaning in modern Norwegian. In Old English and Early and Middle Scots, the word ''ton'', ''toun'', etc. could refer to kinds of settlements as diverse as agricultural estates and holdings, partly picking up the Norse sense (as in the Scots word ''fermtoun'') at one end of the scale, to fortified municipality at the other. If there was any distinction between ''toun'' (fortified municipality) and ''burgh'' (unfortified municipality) as claimed by some, it did not last in practice as ''burghs'' and ''touns'' developed. For example, "Edina Burgh" or "Edinburgh" (called a city today) was built around a fort and eventually came to have a defensive wall. In some cases, "town" is an alternate name for "city" or "village" (especially a larger village). Sometimes, the word "town" is short for "township". In general, today towns can be differentiated from townships, villages, or hamlets on the basis of their economic character, in that most of a town's population will tend to derive their living from manufacturing industry, commerce, and public services rather than primary industry such as agriculture or related activities. A place's population size is not a reliable determinant of urban character. In many areas of the world, as in India at least until recent times, a large village might contain several times as many people as a small town. In the United Kingdom, there are historical cities that are far smaller than the larger towns. The modern phenomenon of extensive suburban growth, satellite urban development, and migration of city-dwellers to villages have further complicated the definition of towns, creating communities urban in their economic and cultural characteristics but lacking other characteristics of urban localities. Some forms of non-rural settlement, such as temporary mining locations, may be clearly non-rural, but have at best a questionable claim to be called a town. Towns often exist as distinct governmental units, with legally defined borders and some or all of the appurtenances of local government (e.g., a police force). In the United States these are referred to as "incorporated towns". In other cases the town lacks its own governance and is said to be "unincorporated". Note that the existence of an unincorporated town may be legally set forth through other means, as through zoning districts. In the case of some planned communities, the town exists legally in the form of covenants on the properties within the town. The United States Census identifies many census-designated places (CDPs) by the names of unincorporated towns which lie within them; however, those CDPs typically include rural and suburban areas and even surrounding villages and other towns. The distinction between a town and a city similarly depends on the approach adopted: a city may strictly be an administrative entity which has been granted that designation by law, but in informal usage, the term is also used to denote an urban locality of a particular size or importance: whereas a medieval city may have possessed as few as 10,000 inhabitants, today some consider an urban place of fewer than 100,000 as a town, even though there are many officially designated cities that are much smaller than that. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「town」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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