Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:17:50 +0100 From: "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive@demon.net> Message-ID: <20070713091750.GG21582@finch-staff-1.thus.net> | But so what? Every country has its own concept of what a "city" is and how | it differs from a town. Actually, for us, that distinction isn't relevant either. We use "city" to just mean "local population centre" - whether that's a village, town or "city" in some other nomenclature doesn't matter. All that matters is that it is a location where people live closely enough together that they're all going to set their clocks to the same time. (If some area that people might like to call a city, such as the Coolangatta/Tweed Heads on the Qld/NSW border in Aust, doesn't have the "same time" property, then it is useless for our purposes, and doesn't warrang further consideration, unless perhaps one or more of its time zones is uniquely used in that area) | Does "Greater Milan" have a single governmental authority? That doesn't matter either - the Sydney/Blacktown example would fail if that were the test. The local govt authority for Sydney covers a fairly small area, and while the population there during working hours is fairly high, not very many actually live there, there are plenty of municipalities (with their own local govt) that would have larger populations than the city of Sydney (according to municipal boundaries). Whether Blacktown is the biggest of them or not I have no idea, but it might be. But that's not the Sydney that almost anyone thinks of - even people who live in Blacktown would tell you that they're from Sydney if you ask them, not from Blacktown - not unless you ask "where in Sydney?". Sydney for our purposes includes all its suburbs, and perhaps even (these days) the Illawarra region (Wollongong etc) and maybe even Newcastle (if it doesn't it probably will within a few years). kre