City At Night

Distinction between cities and towns
There are probably as many different ways of conceiving what a city is as there are cities. A simple definition therefore has its attractions. The simplest is that a city is a human settlement in which strangers are likely to meet. Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, 1977, p. 39.
The difference between towns and cities is differently understood in different parts of the world. Indeed, many languages other than English often use a single word for both concepts (German Stadt, Dutch stad, Swedish stad, Danish/Norwegian by, etc.). Iberian languages typically use a three-way designation (Catalan: “poble”, “vila”, “ciutat”; Galician: “aldea”, “vila”, “cidade”; Portuguese: “aldeia”, “vila”, “cidade”; Spanish: “pueblo”, “villa”, “ciudad”—respectively “village”, “town”, “city”); Italian: “villaggio”, "paese" “città”—respectively “village”, "town", “city”; , but other Romance languages don’t (French: “village”, “ville”).