The Irish city of Limerick is at risk of losing its city status, thanks to a population census coniciding with a rugby game, expected to take as many 20,000 of the city's 54,000 burghers to Dublin for the night. The threshold for a place to be considered a city is 50,000.

Posted by: toby | | Thu Apr 20 11:00:49 2006

That's interesting. In England, it's the presence of a cathedral.

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org/ | Thu Apr 20 14:22:56 2006

I think the 50,000 may be an EU standard.

How does one define a cathedral, btw? If it means "any church that the Church of England have given a cathedral status to", then it just means that city status can be bestowed (or revoked) by the CoE, in theory more or less arbitrarily (though, in practice, the CoE's hands are somewhat tied by the status quo and public expectation).

What's the Australian standard for what constitutes a city, btw?

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