All these words denote a geographically or politically defined area and the population it contains. Here they are considered only as general terms and not as specific local-government definitions (where applicable), since the hierarchical organization of local government varies from state to state in Australia and differs again in New Zealand. A city is a municipality (in New Zealand a borough) with definite boundaries and with various legal powers derived from a charter granted by the government. To be declared a city , a municipality (borough) must attain a prescribed population figure (e.g., 15,000 in South Australia, 20,000 in New Zealand) and yield a certain annual revenue in rates. Hamlet and village , which are thought of as the smallest clusters of settlement in the list, are both collections of buildings in a rural district. Neither word is in common parlance nowadays, but both are often used in writing: a quaint old English hamlet with its thatched cottages and cobbled street; a picturesque village in the Italian Alps. (Occasionally there is a departure from the rural context, as in Melbourne’s fashionable inner residential area of Toorak, in which the shopping centre and immediate vicinity is known as Toorak Village.)

A town is an area with a more considerable collection of buildings than a hamlet or a village , and with a population of some hundreds or thousands. The word is generally used in reference to rural regions: a city businessman who had been born and reared in a country town . When towns and small cities are primarily residential areas adjacent to a large city , or are actually close to its heart (as the City of Subiaco in Perth), they are known as suburbs . The kind of central city around which suburban communities spring up is often referred to as a metropolis; Sydney and Mebourne, for instance, may be described in this way. In Australia, the six state capital cities and Canberra, capital city of the Australian Capital Territory, are known as metropolitan areas.

Megalopolis ?not to be confused with metropolis because of sound and spelling ?is a word that may be encountered as a result of its growing currency in the United States. There it describes an urban complex made up of several major cities. Such a complex is that bounded by Boston on the north and Washington on the south, with New York as its centre. Australian urban planners are familiar with the term, and some think of the Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong complex as a megalopolis . The word is a Greek one meaning great city. The Greek megalopolis was a large city with a population made up of people who moved there from surrounding villages .