Sorry if this is a weird or stupid question.
Usually, when the US is portrayed in news or movies, it looks like there aren’t any villages. Everything is basically centred around the nearest town, with some suburban sprawl surrounding the town. But it seems like between towns there aren’t any settlements.
Am I getting a wrong impression, or is it dependent on the geographical are (e.g West/East), or something else?
28 comments
There’s a few but they’re not typical.
You have an incorrect impression. There are towns, villages, cities of all sizes.
Villages do exist, but are usually located relatively close to larger towns, causing people to forget or not pay any mind to it being a village.
I’m honestly not sure how you’d tell the difference between a town and a village.
We don’t really call them villages, but towns do exist. Usually smaller areas like a few square kilometers with a central road and some shops and restaurants. Usually the people living there are supporting some local industry – could be farming, logging, mining, etc.
We don’t really call anything villages, so on that level, they’re almost unheard of. And what is called a village isn’t necessarily what you’re thinking of (look up Greenwich Village, for example). I know a village is pretty much a small town, but I don’t know if you’ve got other sorts of details in mind.
There are small towns that are not suburbs with anywhere from a hundred or so people to several thousand. Maybe they’d be villages elsewhere, but we call them towns, sometimes cities.
We don’t really use the term “village”, but equivalent small settlements certainly do exist. I’d probably call them “small towns”.
I think it’s just a legal nomenclature difference.
I believe the state of Washington only had cities.
If people charted a community to have legal self governance it is legally known as a city. Even if there’s only a few hundred people.
We do have villages but their definitions are different from state to state. I used to live in an incorporated village in New York. Belows is how it is defined;
**In New York, a village is an incorporated area that differs from a city in that a village is within the jurisdiction of one or more towns, whereas a city is independent of a town. Villages thus have less autonomy than cities.[2]**
**A village is usually, but not always, within a single town. A village may be coterminous with, and have a consolidated government with, a town. A village is a clearly defined municipality that provides the services closest to the residents, such as garbage collection, street and highway maintenance, street lighting and building codes. Some villages provide their own police and other optional services. Those municipal services not provided by the village are provided by the town or towns containing the village. As of the 2000 census, there are 553 villages in New York.**
**There is no limit to the population of a village in New York; Hempstead, the largest village in the state, has 55,000 residents, making it more populous than some of the state’s cities. However, villages in the state may not exceed five square miles (13 km²) in area. Present law requires a minimum of 500 residents to incorporate as a village.**
In the state I live in now there is no such thing as a village.
They’re all over the place.
Tons of movies and TV are set in small towns/villages. Endless examples. Twin Peaks, Picket Fences, Gilmore Girls, Dawson’s Creek, One Tree Hill, Stranger Things, The Goonies, IT…I could go on all day.
Maybe you define them differently than I would.
People are incorrect in asserting that we don’t call things villages. Numerous states have municipal types called “villages.” Also, colloquially, numerous states have things that sure as heck look like “villages.” Many, not all, are found in New England.
As the country developed, especially in the 20th century, the way we laid out and built towns began looking less and less like the stereotypical notion of a “village.” Nevertheless the country is full of very, very small towns in the center of large agricultural or recreational areas. It’s up to you if you think they look like “villages” or not.
We don’t use that term. There are small towns or farming communities. I don’t know the qualifiers for a “village.”
Some people are responding that we don’t use the term village. This is false. Some states don’t use the term village, but some states do. I grew up just outside a small village of about [500](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennon,_Michigan) people when I was a kid growing up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_(United_States)
There are small villages in places… here’s an example: [Leonore, IL](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Leonore,+IL/@41.1884529,-88.982493,1260m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x880be47c48b540e1:0x3eb77b966e230178!8m2!3d41.1894788!4d-88.9806354) (population: 130)
Just a few road, a couple dozen buildings surrounded by farms for miles… nearest towns of any size are Streator (13k people) and Ottawa (18k people)
What is a “village”?
Indiana only has towns and cities, as defined by state law, in terms of municipal government. Other states might have a variety of other municipal classifications.
There are neighborhoods in Indianapolis like [Broad Ripple Village](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Ripple_Village,_Indianapolis), where at one time Broad Ripple was its own, independent municipal government. But its been incorporated into the City of Indianapolis for nearly 100 years at this point. The “village” part of the name has just stuck, because it has a little main street with shops, restaurants and whatnot. But there’s nothing in Indiana law that makes a village anything different, its just a name.
I live in a village, but it’s not what you’re thinking. We’re a suburb bordering Chicago. Lots of the suburbs are designated as villages.
Villages exist. They often aren’t a legal designation in the state government but sometimes they are.
For example Rhode Island municipalities are cities and towns. However there are villages that are under cities and towns and usually reflect historic settlements and have some minor self governance but are largely ceremonial.
Galilee, RI is an example. It is part of Narragansett, RI but is officially its own tiny village. So it is run by the town of Narragansett but has some mostly ceremonial governance.
Plenty of villages where I live. The village will have a village hall, police and fire department, parks, maybe a pool or a band shell.
To get this out of the way, legally “Town”, “City” and “Village” have different meanings from state to state. (In my state either something is legally a “city”- meaning it’s self governing- or it’s not, “town” and “village” have no legal meaning). So I’m assuming generically you’re referring to a small settlement between what we would commonly call town and cities. They exist but you don’t see them on TV because nothing usually happens there.
They exist, but most Americans never use the term when talking about a small community. Town is almost always used. It my be different in the Northeast, but in the South every small community would be called a town.
Odd enough there’s actually a community called The Villages in Florida. It’s, uhhh interesting? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Villages,_Florida
There’s a village smack in the middle of my hometown, and the college I attended is located in a village. There are small communities all over the U.S.; sounds like the media you’re watching just doesn’t focus on them.
In Ohio, it’s common for an area to have a village and township. The village which is the central part has factories, stores, restaurants, and houses that have small yards (<.5 acres) like what you would find in an urban area and usually rely on city water and sewer. The township is the outer part where houses are more spread out since the properties have larger yards, farms, and not many businesses if any are located in the township part which rely on wells for water and septic tanks for waste since city water and sewer isn’t in that area.
I don’t personally associate the word village with most places in North America outside of some places in New York state, New England, and Atlantic Canada. The word village seems to have a more antique vibe, like a place with a stone or clapboard church, a little central green, a general store, a café-bar, etc.
Everywhere else, I’d just say small town or, I don’t know, reaaaaally small town.
In Maine, you might find highway signs or bus schedules pointing you to “Freeport Village”, but it isn’t a legal term. Just a cute way to say Downtown.
You gotta explain to us what you mean by villages.
I say that because honestly the difference between different names for places isn’t really clear. I’ve seen places called:
* cities
* towns
* burgs
* boroughs
* townships
* village
* community
* hamlet
I’ve seen all of those with large or small populations and land sizes. In the US it all just basically seems like a name for a place where people live. They don’t really mean much specifically.
Define “village”.
I grew up in a town of under <5000 people. It’s surrounded by woods and farms. The nearest place with a hospital is a town of <5000 that was once bigger a 20min drive away. The nearest large settlement is a town of maybe 60k about 40km away.
Are any of these villages?
If so then there are plenty of them but they house a smaller percentage of the population and have since WWII.
I grew up in a village that was about 5 minutes’ drive from a smaller hamlet. Today I live in a rural area that’s part of a town for voting purposes but my postal address is for the nearby city.
There are all sorts of designations in the US and some vary by state. That said, when I’m speaking about my hometown, I refer to it as a village because we lived on the edge of the walkable area of small neighborhood blocks surrounding the tiny tiny business district. Once you went about a half mile past my house, it was no longer considered the village; then you were in the town of the same name. Most people who visit my hometown today would probably naturally refer to it as a town, not a village.