Poor OP. They're leaving this thread more confused than ever.

The United States is huge and every region has different definitions and expectations of "city", "town", "suburb", "wide place in the road", etc. LOL, when I was a kid we called Tulsa, OK a "small town". Well, yeah, as opposed to Chicagoland.

You won't find anything definitive, but we don't use the word "village" except to connote... well, I can't really say. But I know one when I see it!

They're still cities, but people tend to start calling them "rural" when you get a certain distance from the big cities and things spread out, often also near farmland and/or nature.

For example, this would probably count as rural.

Your definition of village is the equivalent of a rural town in the US.

Low population, low density, lots of farm land, can count the number of houses in a mile stretch of road on your fingers. May have one small commercial area within 15 miles with a dollar general, a gas station and, if you're lucky, a grocery store. Not nearly enough businesses nearby to employ people even the measly number of people there that isn't a farmer, so they commute to neighboring towns or counties to find work in factories, possibly dozens of miles away. I basically just described where my sister lives in Tennessee.

Just wait until you find out about townships.

In my case it was population 600, 1 paved road through it, no stop lights, 1 or 2 roadside stores, a small k-8 school, and a 2 room post office.

"Town" is generally used to mean "something smaller than a city". I live in a town, and the population is about 30K. It's technically a township, but people don't really use that term widely. I know that doesn't really clear things up, but your real answer is "it's complicated".

Yeah, we don't really use village in the US. A town is anything with a population smaller than about 10,000ish but the exact number will vary with the density and vibe. If you can't drive across the entire population center (where it's roughly broken into blocks) within the span of Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd (single version not album version) then it's too big to be a town.

There are named towns in the US with populations in the single digits. This can be due to either the population moving away, fleeing, or simply dying off over time -- Centralia, PA leaps to mind -- or because it's just a cluster of a couple of houses at a crossroads that would otherwise be in the middle of nowhere. There may not necessarily be a post office or any other services there.

In fact, there are "towns" in the US in that they are named on the map and have a defined location filed with the state/county/Postal Service, but they have no inhabitants at all. In many cases this is because a planned development never actually happened.

An American Small Town sounds a lot like your village.

But, we have like 10,000x as much space to spread out in, so we can have these villages every 10 miles or so in every direction. You could easily drive for 24 hours across the country and easily avoid all major cities.

This guy has a YouTube channel of him just driving around small towns in the rural Midwest USA. https://youtube.com/@joeandnicsroadtrip

There are towns that are entirely just housing developments with no stores, no services, and no schools for miles. We are extremely spread out and even a town of a couple thousand people can have nothing nearby. These are what I've always known as "rural" towns. Farming communities and suburbs entirely cut off from the bigger cities by miles of just empty fields and farm land, in addition to places like up around Mariposa with populations of sub 100 people, cut off more by the mountainous terrain than because of how the infrastructure was built up.

You’re familiar with market towns in the UK? A bit like one of those but with hours and hours of agricultural land all around it. A solitary high street in the middle of nowhere.

N.B. I’m not USian so don’t know what I’m on about…

A town in the USA has a population requirement of at least 5,000 people. However that can be spread out over hundreds or even thousands of square miles.

Villages do exist (I live in one) and it is generally defined as a smaller incorporated entity within a town.

So, for instance, I live in the country of the USA, in the state of New York, in the county of Allegany, in the Town of Andover, in the Village of Andover. It's like nesting dolls of government and taxes.

WTF is a lorry? They look a lot like trucks to me.

Colloquially, it just means a small municipality. A "rural town" is a small municipality that is not near a larger metro area.

Town has a specific meaning in some states. I'm from Ohio. There is no such legal meaning here. Any municipality over 5k residents is a city. Anything other than that is a village. I am from a city with a population of about 6k. Outside of the city limits is farmland. I would say I'm from a small town/rural area.

Caveat: none of these are formal definitions. This is what I am thinking of when using or hearing these terms.

I wouldn't call it an "urban" area unless I can see a privately-owned 4+ story building with an elevator. Government buildings don't count: they might be the sole example of a 4+ story building within 50 miles. Partial elevator access (intended for handicap compliance to the lower floors) doesn't count.

"Suburban" extends from the limits of the urban area, out to where the farms or forests are larger than 100 acres. Suburban areas are primarily comprised of single family homes, but you may also find 1-3 floor apartment complexes.

"Rural" is anywhere outside of both urban and suburban areas.

A commercial or mixed commercial/residential area - that isn't large or congested enough to be considered an "urban" area on its own - would be a "town". A "rural town" would be a town not connected to a suburban or urban area: you can't get to a city without passing large farms or forests.

A town won't have its own police force. They will rely on the county sheriff's department for law enforcement activity. Once it is large enough to have its own police, it becomes a "city".

In my area, a "village" is a town populated exclusively by people with twice the median income.

I pay village taxes and town & county taxes. 😟

Anything with less than 50k is rural

Rural usually means Hillbillies.

"urban" means city, not town

How many dollar stores are required for it to be classified as a town?