What is a town Outline the problems associated with defining urban settlements
Urban areas are very difficult to define. ... Jones asks, “Is it (a town or city) a physical conglomeration of streets and houses, or is it a centre of exchange and commerce? ... ” The United Nations tried to establish criteria for defining whether or not a settlement was an urban area. But they ran into a number of problems. The UN’s first criterion was population size; if a settlement has a population over a certain size, then it can be called an urban area. However, different countries use different population levels to define their urban areas, therefore there is no general consensus in the world over how big an urban area is in terms of population.