Ft. Collins is huge (~170k people compared to most CO towns which are 400-10k ppl). The title sort of leads you to believe it was a folksy, rural community effort. In reality Intel, AMD, Broadcom and a major State University are located there and that probably helped the effort substantially.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Collins,_Colorado#Major_i...
Around the world, it seems that there's one consistent criterion for something being a city: it must have self-rule and a certain amount of government structure. Some places (notably not the US) have population requirements, but those tend to be really low (100-1,000 people)[1].
I personally appreciate the headline saying "town" in a colloquial sense, because I don't think of 170,000 as "huge" and it's significant that it's not a large city doing this.
For context, Ft. Collins is not in the top 150 most populous US cities, and to even reach the top 50, it would have to more than double in size.
1. https://www.thoughtco.com/difference-between-a-city-and-a-to...
But that's the problem. It's not a "town" in a colloquial sense for anyone who grew up outside of major metro areas. If 170k is not enough, then there are no cities in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, nor South Dakota.
The difference between 100k and 1 million residents is much less significant than the difference between 10k and 100k.
What do you mean by self-rule? Singapore is autonomous, but that's definitely not the norm for cities. Almost all of them belong to larger states.
No US city has self-rule even at the level below the federal government. Washington, DC comes closest, but it is technically ruled directly by the federal government (in a manner that is not true for cities that belong to states). China has four "province-level" cities, but is generally accepted to have many more than four cities.
Typically at the municipality level, self-rule means the ability to make and enforce your own laws, as long as they are not inconsistent with the laws of higher government levels, without needing explicit permission of those higher government levels.
This is the concept at play at the municipality level that is being discussed. The cities run themselves unless the state has to step in for some reason. Just as the states run themselves unless the federal government needs to step in for some reason.
This is as opposed to say, a village, which in New England at least is defined as a population center which is not self-governed, but under the direct control of a larger municipality within which it lies.
Jews in medieval Europe were generally subject to Jewish law and not subject to the law that applied to the rest of the city. That's self-rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_city_(United_State...
Of course, Washington DC could be considered one example, although the above Wikipedia link begs to differ because DC isn't a state. However, there are a few dozen more, most of which are in Virginia.
Also, this kind of administrative definition of "city" causes weird conflicts. It's easy for a city, such as Los Angeles, to be much larger than the county it's nominally located in, such as Los Angeles county. Conceptually, it's also easy for a city to be its own county, which is a different status than "not contained in any county" -- but in practice where this is supposedly the case, the city will not actually match the county boundaries, instead being noticeably bigger or smaller.
I conclude that, in order to make the claim that cities usually have self-rule, the people who would like to make this claim adjust their definition of self-rule so that it covers the things they're already sure are cities, rather than having a definition of self-rule in mind and observing that, by apparent coincidence, most "cities" turn out to have it.
Not all places start out with those things. The rules differ by state, but generally, you need a certain population, a percentage of whom must petition the higher authorities (which you mention), and then vote as a community to create the create the infrastructure and take care of themselves.
At that point, they lose a lot of the benefits provided by those higher levels, like the county and state service providers of fire, police, and garbage disposal for example.
For example, it's not possible for a VA city or county to make something a crime, unless there's a specific law on the state level allowing them to.
Municipal ISP would have been cool, but I think power would be a better option first. A neighboring town (either Mansfield or Medfield) as municipal power and compares to us during storms they do great (as in fast response times and efforts to not lose power).
Not all selectmen are terrible, but it only takes a few bad eggs to make it hell for everyone.
I should also note that analogies are not my forte.
It used to be in the UK you needed a Church of England Bishop (and a cathedral) but now you have to apply to the Lord Chancellor.
The largest city in the UK is (Greater) London, population ~9M. This is an outlier. The next largest is Birmingham, population ~1M. The smallest city (by population) is St Davids, population ~1800. This is also an outlier.
Most cities are 100k to 1M. However, there are a decent number of towns >100k.
The largest town is Reading, population 230k.
There possibly isn't a smallest town worth defining - there's no objective divide between villages and towns.
Interesting, that's pretty big from my perspective.
I grew up in a suburb of a big city (~750k, ~4M metro), and my city was ~60k people. I currently live in a city of <50k. I never considered either to be huge, but definitely not small. The biggest city in my county is a little over 100k people, the "big city" in my area is just under 200k, with the metro area being just over 1M.
My 30k city has its own fiber network, and several neighboring cities have banded together on a fiber project. When I see "town", I think of something smaller than my own city, not something nearly as big as the "big city" in my area.
Way better setup than when I was in I was in ATL and forced to use Comcast. Plus there aren't any data caps.
(sorry this is a bad intra-Colorado rivalry joke, please ignore)
But also Fort Collins has a lot of beer production, so they are ok in my book. It’s still not Boulder though...