A village is a human settlement or a residential community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town; some geographers describe villages as having between 500 and 2,500 inhabitants. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighborhoods. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings; however, transient villages also exist. Further, the dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, not scattered broadly over the landscape, as a dispersed settlement.