I have told this before here, but in the Netherlands there are no
cities officially, except for Amsterdam that is the capital
("hoofdstad") of the Netherlands according to the constitution, and
therefore a city.
The notion "city" does have a meaning for geographers, of course.
Some people, at least in the Netherlands, consider a city a town with
a city charter. That leaves us with lots of big towns that aren't a
city, and a "city" as Bronkhorst that has 155 inhabitants.
Municipalities completely ignore "city". Some municipalities have
several (medieval) cities within their boundaries.
I know that in other countries there definitely is a difference
between "municipality" and "city" (e.g. Poland: "Gmina ..." is
different from "Miasto ..."). Sometimes it seems that the word "city"
is used instead of "municipality" as some sort of predicate (in
France: with "La Ville de ..." normally "La Commune de ..." is
meant). In Spain, these predicates can be really elaborate ("The most
noble and most loyal city of ...").
"Grootstad" is not commonly used in Dutch, but the word exists.
Peter S.
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., Kevin Meynell <kevin@m...> wrote:
> Jan,
>
> >I am sorry I wrote "city". Probably I should have been
writing "town". (In
> >Norwegian it is the same one word for both the English words, and
American
> >tourists are frequently naming any small village of ours "a city",
which
> >makes us to do the same ;-)))
>
> Yes, this is yet another issue. I believe it's also the same in
Dutch -
> 'stad' refers to both a town and city - although there is the
rather
> contrived term 'Grootstad'. In contrast, the term 'town' and 'city'
has a
> distinctly separate meaning in the UK.
>
> >I cannot understand why it should be so difficult to prove if a
city has
> >that big population or not. Hammerfest municipality today has
about 9200
> >persons which makes it not that far away.
>
> I know you need to draw boundaries somewhere (;-)), but
municipalities
> often incorporate areas that aren't really part of the town. I
don't know
> if it's the case in Hammerfest, but Norwegian municipalities often
include
> surrounding communities and outlying areas which strictly speaking
aren't
> part of the main settlement.
>
> >According to my Webster a town is "a village with a regular market
place",
> >and a city is "an important town".
>
> That definition of a village is quite dubious ;-)
>
> Regards,
>
> Kevin Meynell