Interesting question. There is no universal answer, but I'll give you a British perspective. For a town in the UK to be officially designated a city, it has to apply for a Royal Charter from the monarch. In other words, a town has to ask the Queen for permission to call itself a city, and that permission may or may not be granted. In the past, there had to be a cathedral, but that is no longer the case. Many of the more recently designated cities don't have cathedrals. A city needs to be of a certain size (usually at least 250,000 inhabitants) and it has to offer everything that these inhabitants need for their daily lives. This means that it will have banks, building societies and branches of large companies, a law court, at least one large commercial centre with all the major stores, one or more universities, a few theatres and concert halls, a stadium which is the home ground of the local football club.....and so on. This means two things: one, that the residents of the city rarely need to leave the city and two (more importantly) that people from the surrounding towns and villages need to come into the city to work, to study, or to see concerts and sports. In other words, a city is a commercial and cultural hub.

This has been asked several times on Italki, the answer is that it depends on the country. The United Kingdom has a formal distinction between towns and cities, a city is a settlement that has formal 'city status' because if its importance. There is a list of all cities in the UK, if a place is not on that list, it is not a city. In England most, but not all, places with a Church of England cathedral are cities. Other places have city status for other reasons. As a general rule, cities are larger than towns, but there are exceptions, for example St David's in Wales is a city for historical reason but has a population of less than 2000 while there are towns with populations of hundreds of thousands. Other countries have different rules, but generally cities are larger and have a greater political or economic importance than towns.

US: Cities are bigger than towns, except when they're not. Technically: Every state can have its own rules about what is a "city" and what is a "town." But some states don't have any rules at all and the states that do have rules do not always match each other. For some states, whether a place is a "city" or a "town" often has to do with the form of government the area has. And some states have other designations like "village," "borough," "municipality," "hamlet," etc. And some places, while technically being "cities" have the official name "Town of ______." And there are towns and villages that call themselves "_____________ City." It is very confusing. Practically: People say "city" when they think of big urban places (think London, Paris, New York City, Shanghai, Istanbul, Berlin). People will say "town," when they think of smaller (still urban) places.

Thank you!😊

Hello Juliet a town is a little place with not many population and a city can consider as a metropoli with a concentration of people and different resources and advantage.