# town (settlement)

A community where people live inside boundaries.

- Computed level: L8 (depth in the emergence graph, not abstraction)
- Status: review  ·  Domain: settlement  ·  Arena: town

## Emergence
**Emerges from:** [people](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-people.social), [boundary](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-boundary.limit), [community](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-community.social), [inside](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-inside.spatial), [live](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-live.biological)

**Through:** People live inside boundaries and act as a community.

**Novel properties:**
- bounded habitation
- persistent social cohesion
- shared spatial enclosure

## Examples
- In 2023, the town of Kiruna in northern Sweden relocated its entire urban center to avoid land collapse from underground mining. *(engineering)*
- The walled town of Carcassonne in France was continuously inhabited within its medieval fortifications from the 13th century until today. *(institutions)*
- Over 200 people live year-round inside the boundary of Alert, Nunavut, the northernmost permanently inhabited settlement on Earth. *(everyday life)*

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*Canonical: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-town.settlement*  
*Structured data: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-town.settlement.json*  
*Every definition provably resolves to space, time, energy and pattern.*