What makes a Suburb a town?

[empirestate]

Suburb / suburban is mostly the same in my opinion. While the term "suburb" often points to cities outside the central city, often both the central city and the suburb are mostly suburban in character. For instance Plano is a suburb of Dallas, even though Dallas is maybe 80% suburban too (i.e. single-family detached housing). As a matter of fact most U.S. metropolitan areas are nearly entirely suburban in character, except for some older cities along the east coast.

It's very true that as you go west, cities take on a more suburban overall character; however, I'd still make a distinction between the terms "suburb" and "suburban" even in those cases. The difference shows between statements like "I live in a suburb of Dallas," meaning that I live in Plano or Arlington or some such place, versus "I live in suburban Dallas," meaning that I live somewhere in that 80% or so of the city of Dallas that has a suburban character. (The second statement could also mean the same as the first, if the speaker doesn't expect the listener to recognize the names of the surrounding municipalities. Vice versa is less likely, though.

That's all semantics though; there's no binding or official dictum on the matter.

Suburbs do not necessarily have to be low-density, especially not in international context. For instance most suburbs of Korean cities consist of high-rise apartment blocks. Or the Paris inner belt of suburbs, which are mostly rundown social housing apartment buildings. Suburban areas in the Netherlands are usually administered as a part of the core city. Even in the U.S. some suburban areas are surprisingly urban. For instance if you drive the Dallas North Tollway and you think "hey, are we in Oklahoma City already?" but then you realize this is just the suburban skyline of Addison.

And conversely, also speaking of Oklahoma City, you traverse a fair amount of completely rural area after first entering the city limits (from the west at least), then a long stretch of suburban area, and finally it starts to look like what in the East is known as a city. But you can bet that if New York and Oklahoma were equally young, then NYC's corporate boundary would stretch way the heck onto Long Island and up the Hudson Valley.

(Actually, it's pretty impressive that NYC remains the nation's largest, by a comfortable margin, despite having its borders completely politically and physically constrained for over 100 years.)

[Scott5114]

And conversely, also speaking of Oklahoma City, you traverse a fair amount of completely rural area after first entering the city limits (from the west at least), then a long stretch of suburban area, and finally it starts to look like what in the East is known as a city. But you can bet that if New York and Oklahoma were equally young, then NYC's corporate boundary would stretch way the heck onto Long Island and up the Hudson Valley.

Oklahoma City is known for its rampant annexing. A good deal of what would be the suburbs of any other city fall within the city limits of Oklahoma City. It exists in three counties. It was, in fact, at one time, the largest city in the United States by land area (I think it has since been passed by, I believe, Los Angeles and Juneau, the latter after Juneau annexed a nearby island and a swath of water in between to allow the island to "connect" to the main part of Juneau).

[The High Plains Traveler]

And conversely, also speaking of Oklahoma City, you traverse a fair amount of completely rural area after first entering the city limits (from the west at least), then a long stretch of suburban area, and finally it starts to look like what in the East is known as a city. But you can bet that if New York and Oklahoma were equally young, then NYC's corporate boundary would stretch way the heck onto Long Island and up the Hudson Valley.

Oklahoma City is known for its rampant annexing. A good deal of what would be the suburbs of any other city fall within the city limits of Oklahoma City. It exists in three counties. It was, in fact, at one time, the largest city in the United States by land area (I think it has since been passed by, I believe, Los Angeles and Juneau, the latter after Juneau annexed a nearby island and a swath of water in between to allow the island to "connect" to the main part of Juneau).

L.A. was the largest city in the U.S. in area a long time ago, but because most populated areas adjacent to it have incorporated, it really has nowhere to annex unless it takes over land in the mountains. I thought Jacksonville FL had become the largest in area after surpassing Oklahoma City. If Juneau annexed an ocean channel to link to an island and it counts as part of their incorporated area, would that be the "annexation to nowhere"?

[connroadgeek]

I like the way my small state of Connecticut is organized. 169 tax towns as the state calls its subdivisions. Each town is numbered in alphabetical order, and internally that's how they are referred - tax town 57 for my town of Greenwich, for example. Every square inch of land in the state belongs to one of them, hence no unincorporated territories. There's no differentiation between a town or city as far the state is concerned except for signing highway signs with "town line" or "city line". Surface streets sign all of these borders as "town line" whether they have a population of 10k or 100k. Counties are also more or less meaningless as there are no forms of county government and aren't signed. There are no villages per se, just namesakes for sections of a town and sometimes there is also a post office and its own zip code, but that's about as far as it goes - very informal compared to other states - NY for example has sections of a town that have their own village hall, police dept, etc. Definitely no weirdness or interesting features in this state. Just a very simple system with no ambiguities.

[empirestate]

What happened to Connecticut's boroughs?

[jwolfer]

And conversely, also speaking of Oklahoma City, you traverse a fair amount of completely rural area after first entering the city limits (from the west at least), then a long stretch of suburban area, and finally it starts to look like what in the East is known as a city. But you can bet that if New York and Oklahoma were equally young, then NYC's corporate boundary would stretch way the heck onto Long Island and up the Hudson Valley.

Oklahoma City is known for its rampant annexing. A good deal of what would be the suburbs of any other city fall within the city limits of Oklahoma City. It exists in three counties. It was, in fact, at one time, the largest city in the United States by land area (I think it has since been passed by, I believe, Los Angeles and Juneau, the latter after Juneau annexed a nearby island and a swath of water in between to allow the island to "connect" to the main part of Juneau).

L.A. was the largest city in the U.S. in area a long time ago, but because most populated areas adjacent to it have incorporated, it really has nowhere to annex unless it takes over land in the mountains. I thought Jacksonville FL had become the largest in area after surpassing Oklahoma City. If Juneau annexed an ocean channel to link to an island and it counts as part of their incorporated area, would that be the "annexation to nowhere"?

In 1968 Jacksonville and Duval County consolidated and created the largest city in land area in the US.  In the 1970s( i think) Juneau, AK became larger in land area.   Jacksonville metro has a population of about 1.3 million with 850K in Jax city limits a high ratio.  Jacksonville is the 3rd largest city on the Eastern Seaboard behind NYC and Philadelphia.  There are more in Jacksonville city limits than Boston, Baltimore or Washington DC.  However Jacksonville includes the urban core of Jacksonville, suburban areas and rural areas of pineforest. ( less and less of that every decade)  Coming inot Jax from the North on I-95 there are a good 7 miles of forest before hitting suburbanesque landscapes.  Most of the Northeaster portion of Duval County is the Timacuan National Preserve. 

Just 20 miles east of Center City Philadelphia is the Pine Barrens

[connroadgeek]

What happened to Connecticut's boroughs?

As far as I know, only Naugatuck refers to itself as a borough. The state recognizes them as tax town #88. Towns can call themselves whatever they like. Doesn't mean the state will give any special recognition or treatment of it. For example, there are a few towns in Fairfield County which have a population well over 50,000 that would be considered small cities by any standard that still call themselves "Town of..." just because of the negative connotation "City of..." invokes. Again, it doesn't matter to the State. They only care about taxing authorities, and in a state with very high taxes that makes sense. We also don't have things like municipal income taxes or municipal sales tax in general. Just a very simple system which I guess is what happens when you have a very small urbanized state.

[empirestate]

Looks like you've got nine boroughs there in CT, which are separately incorporated places similar to New York's villages. Naugatuck has consolidated with its town, but the other eight are dependent entities within their towns. Certainly not as numerous as such places are in other states, but they are there to complicate the system a little bit. Also, I gather the city of Groton isn't completely coextensive with the town of Groton. And then there's Groton Long Point, a municipal corporation within and dependent on the town of Groton, but not actually a borough for some reason.

So it is certainly a less complicated situation than in other states, but not completely without "weirdness or interesting features". Which, if you ask me, is good!

[Alps]

Don't forget Congamond, the only Connecticut town in a different state!