City Archives - Page 2 of 2

What differentiates a large village from a small town? What exactly are their definitions? A few answers.

What is the origin and definition of the word “ville”?

It is not always easy to distinguish a town from a village… especially since the word ville derives from the Latin villa, which means a farm! In the past, the villa indeed referred to an agricultural estate or a house located in the countryside.

This term then took two parallel directions, giving rise to the words :

villagium, then designating the farm as we know it;
ville, which referred to a “group of houses”.

Thus, the city is far from being a recent notion, and it covers indeed different realities depending on where in the world one lives. In France, the city is understood as a place where populations gather to carry out certain activities: commerce, craft trades, and service provision.

Agricultural activities, for their part, are the domain of villages. Moreover, the city is characterized by a concentration of housing organized along streets, which can be numerous depending on the size of the cities.

What is meant by village?

But this definition is also tending to disappear… For in many villages, one also finds concentrations of housing and various activities related to commerce, crafts, and services. Just like in cities.

Yet a village remains linked to the countryside and to the agricultural activities that are overrepresented there. But again, this distinction is far from being sufficient. In general, it is the number of inhabitants that is taken into account to distinguish a village from a city.

The figure used by INSEE for this criterion is 2,000. Beyond 2,000 inhabitants, therefore, the commune is considered a (small) city. However, there is also a nuance here.

Indeed, some municipalities with more than 2,000 inhabitants can keep the designation of village if the residents are dispersed around the center, and not concentrated in the heart of the commune.

In summary, city and village, what distinction?

The number of inhabitants and their distribution thus provide a consensus for clearly identifying a city from a village. Another criterion also enters into this distinction: housing density.

If the housing in the center of a commune exceeds 2,000 occupants, it means there is a dense housing stock capable of housing a significant number of people. As mentioned earlier, a densely built-up population of fewer than 2,000 souls constitutes a village; beyond that, we speak of a city.

What about the distinction between village and bourg? INSEE introduces here the criterion of the distance between two dwellings. When there are fewer than 200 meters between two homes, we speak of a bourg. Beyond that, we speak of a village, provided the other criteria mentioned are also met.

City, village and commune: what are the differences?

The commune is in fact the smallest administrative subdivision that exists in France. A commune can thus be either a city or a village, and it is necessarily administered by a mayor.

Today, to distinguish the different typologies of urban areas, INSEE refers to the notions of rural communes and urban communes, based on a density grid.

Low-density communes are described as rural, and communes with intermediate or high population density are called urban.

An inexperienced eye might dismiss it as a plain nettle. Not at all! “It’s a magnificent purple dead-nettle. Once cooked, it has a subtle taste of spinach and mushroom. A delight!” exclaims Christophe de Hody, our guide, waving a plant speckled with violet blossoms. Gathered around the bearded quadra in a khaki jacket, about twenty people nod in agreement, focused. Each scribbles in their little notebook, pulls out their smartphone, the botanist’s loupe. We are not in the countryside, nor in the mountains… But just a few hundred meters from the Paris ring road, at the Bois de Vincennes.

But what could possibly push all these people to rise on a Sunday to play amateur foragers, when others go for a jog or walk their dog? “I think the primary motivation of all these people is to regain direct contact with nature”, replies Christophe de Hody. For fourteen years, the founder of the Chemin de la Nature and his colleagues have ridden the wave by offering year‑round walks and courses “in Île-de-France, but also in many regions of the hexagon as well as in Switzerland”. “I signed up after watching his videos”, whispers Alison, 35. This short-haired brunette came all the way from Brussels.

The naturopath, herbalist and field botanist has also become an influencer

It must be said that with 520,000 followers on YouTube, 827,000 on Facebook, and 262,000 on TikTok, the naturopath, herbalist and field botanist has also become an influencer who commands a growing community of curious people. While one might expect an audience of retirees, surprise! Among the 22 foragers in our Sunday group, the ages span from Alma, six and a half, who came with her Parisian mother, to Hubert, 74, from Rouen, who was in the capital for the weekend. “Each time, the profiles are very varied”, confirms Christophe.

In the wake of the Chemin de la Nature and its well‑supervised foraging outings in Vincennes, Saint-Cloud or the Buttes-Chaumont (30 euros for a 2h30 tour, 50 euros for the half‑day), dozens of companies have sprouted up like mushrooms, all aiming to offer city dwellers a breath of fresh air and the prospect of an adventure right at the end of the street. The online platform Wecandoo, which since 2017 catalogs activities and workshops organized by artisans, has seen, over ten years, the number of such city‑on‑the‑edge strolls soar, around the Paris region, but also near Nantes, Bordeaux or Lyon. Among the offerings: “Pick Your Mushrooms”, “Discover Edible Wild Plants”, “Create Your Herbal Tea from the Field”…

Large groups have also spotted the opportunity. Like the equipment supplier Decathlon, which on its travel platform offers around fifty courses labeled “bushcraft” (the English term for the art of surviving in the woods) that emphasize, between building a makeshift shelter and ways to navigate in the forest, foraging for wild edibles. A program aimed at a much broader audience than survivalists, who advocate autonomy and self‑reliance in the face of a potential societal collapse. Meeting during a forest outing in Vincennes, Timothée, 37, a trekking enthusiast and an IT executive in Luxembourg, who doesn’t want to be grouped with the more extreme fringe preparing for the apocalypse, confirms: “Better understanding how to use nature’s resources to reconnect with the wild is what pushed me to sign up.”

Reconnecting with nature in the face of climate change

“There is probably also an undercurrent of ecological anxiety in this craze for edible wild foraging, admits Natalia Santos Amado. But I think, deeper still, what interests people is to reconnect with skills we have lost.”

This Colombian native, trained as an ethnologist, recalls holidays as a child with her maternal grandparents, farmers in the Santander department in northern Colombia. “My grandmother knew every plant on the tip of her fingers.” Decades later, the young woman studies the forgotten medicinal uses of coca leaves among Indigenous tribes. She then ran the Lula organic and vegetarian restaurant in Paris for seven years. After the Covid crisis, the establishment closed. She trained with Chemin de la Nature, joined their teams, before founding her own organization, Caucalis, in 2022, through which she offers workshops that mix foraging and cooking open to all.

A way to reinvigorate the lifestyle of our ancient hunter‑gatherer ancestors by making nature into a pantry? “Today, the principle of wild foraging is not about aiming for subsistence; that would be illusory. It’s more about reintroducing into cooking a few elements we have gathered ourselves”, corrects Natalia. She emphasizes the importance of taking only what is necessary. At the Bois de Boulogne, there used to be a place where wild garlic thrived. “When I passed by last time, I saw that everything had been picked clean, the bulbs trampled… It’s the exact opposite of the spirit of wild foraging”, she laments.

Foraging is part of the daily life of city dwellers in Denmark

The regulatory framework, to say the least, is blurry, and controls are almost non-existent. But the implicit rule for the forager is: “You should collect only up to 30% of what’s available”, explains Clotaire Poirier. The Top Chef finalist in 2024 spent three years in Copenhagen, cooking at the two‑Michelin‑star restaurant Kadeau. “In Denmark, the practice of wild foraging is far more widespread than in France”, adds the 35‑year‑old chef. On his smartphone’s home screen sits a Danish app. The brilliant collaborative map, Vild Mad, lets everyone list spots they’ve found and when to harvest what. “In Copenhagen the city is cleaner than in Paris. There is also incredible biodiversity in the parks… People pick wild strawberries, blueberries… In France, renewed urban interest in this practice gradually emerged, he analyzes, after seeing chefs on TV or on social media taking part.”

His colleague Jacky Ribault, at the helm of L’Ours (one star, just steps from the Bois de Vincennes) tempers the enthusiasm for edible foraging in peri‑urban environments. At least, for professionals. Dog excrement (even human ones), cigarette butts… This chef with rural roots prefers to avoid, for sanitary reasons, serving what one could gather in the nearby woods. If Sunday foragers don’t need to follow the same rules as restaurants, Natalia Santos Amado recalls a few common‑sense rules: “You must gather at least 50 meters away from roads, far from railway lines.” In an environment as frequented as the Bois de Vincennes, the guide advises harvesting “50 cm above ground, and ideally the first leaves, to avoid contamination by excrement or urine, vectors of pathogenic microorganisms”.

Knowing how to identify plants

Above all, as she emphasizes at the outset of every outing, “before harvesting to eat it, you must be 100% sure you have correctly identified the plant”. In France, among 8,000 species, “around 20,000 edible plants grow in the wild”. Not counting mushrooms, and excluding plants with mild toxicity, there would be about fifty species potentially deadly if ingested. “Knowing how to identify plants helps break the fear we have of nature”, she notes. It is also the best way to reconnect with our natural environment, “and to democratize access to these plants, which are available to everyone, not just to chefs”.

At the end of the workshop, the participants, each having paid 75 euros, taste together the various preparations. The root of butterbur, with a fruity and sharp taste, can be eaten steamed or puréed. The field sow‑thistle (thistle) tastes somewhat like artichoke. But the real star of this early spring is the young nettles, which, in addition to being cooked in all sorts of ways—sweet fritters, or savory, minced into dumplings with parmesan and nutmeg—also boast, one learns, an impressive protein content (40%).

And if the true virtue of wild plants did not lie in their gustatory value or their nutritional properties, but rather in the pretext they give us to take to the fields? “Gathering, above all, is a way to enjoy very beautiful walks”, confirms Natalia. Leaning toward the ground in search of a hypothetical mushroom, peering at tree trunks to spot lichens, parting the branches of a bush to see what lies behind… It’s also a way to walk “actively,” being attentive and making nature something more than mere scenery.

A new look at the city

Among the walks Natalia likes to offer her clients, there is one whose main objective is neither to gather nor to cook, but to observe. It happens just a few steps from the Porte de Charenton, along a stretch of the Petite Ceinture, the old disused railway that once surrounded Paris. There, the wild grasses have overtaken the rails. Grasses, couch grass, and the entire procession of wildflowers (ragwort, dandelion, parietary…) mingle with elder bushes and hawthorn copses.

There are places like this near every major urban center in France, within easy reach on foot, by metro, or by regional train. Walking there with a basket guarantees you’ll see them with different eyes. If you return with a handful of wild garlic, or a few wild mushrooms, that’s the cherry on top of the omelette. And if you come back with an empty basket, that’s perfectly fine too.

➤ Article published in GEO HS magazine no. 133, “France, our favorite walks for the summer”, June–July 2026.

➤ Do you like GEO? Then to never miss anything, discover our subscription options to receive GEO at home every month with ease.

What is the difference between a city, a village, and a municipality?