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Every city record carries an optional type field describing what kind of place it is. The value is inherited from the upstream GeoNames feature classification.
The type field mixes two ideas — what a place is (city, town, village) and what administrative role it fills (adm2, county, parish). The same place can be tagged either way. For example, Dallas is adm2 because it is the seat of Dallas County, and major Australian cities are adm1 because they are seats of state-level governments.

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All Type Values

There are 35 distinct values across 153,765 city rows.
typeCountSettlement?Meaning
city96,098✅Actual city
adm220,796✅2nd-order admin division — usually a real city that is also a county/district seat
adm315,774✅Mostly real municipalities/communes tagged with their admin role
section5,346✅Suburbs and districts of larger cities
county4,409❌County-level admin unit — not a settlement
adm43,909✅Similar mix to adm3
adm13,505✅1st-order admin division — usually a state/region seat (e.g. major Australian cities)
district2,381✅District-level populated place
(null)1,900⚠️No type assigned — see below
regency390❌Indonesian kabupaten — admin division
prefecture369❌Prefecture-level admin division
locality319✅Named populated place
capital281✅National or regional capital
municipality209✅Municipality
parish80❌Louisiana-style parish (= county)
banner52❌Inner Mongolia banner — admin division
town48✅Town
province36❌Province-level admin division
adm516✅5th-order admin division (populated)
abandoned15❌Abandoned place
cities13✅Data artifact of city
area12❌Generic administrative area
village10✅Village
historical9❌Historical place — not a live settlement
settlement9✅Settlement
oblast8❌Oblast — admin division
gov_seat6✅Government seat (populated)
special municipality6✅Special municipality
administrative zone5❌Administrative zone
region4❌Region-level admin division
destroyed3❌Destroyed place
township3✅Township
religious2❌Religious site — not a settlement
subdistrict1✅Subdistrict (populated)
historical_capital1❌Former capital — not a live settlement

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Filtering to Genuine Settlements

For use cases like “find the nearest city to a location” or “populate a dropdown”, you want to exclude admin-only and non-place types. Use an exclusion list rather than an inclusion list — any new settlement-style value added in the future is kept by default. Exclude these types: 
county, regency, prefecture, parish, banner, province, area, oblast,
administrative zone, region, abandoned, historical, destroyed, religious,
historical_capital

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SQL

SELECT *
FROM cities
WHERE (
  type IS NULL
  OR type NOT IN (
    'county', 'regency', 'prefecture', 'parish', 'banner', 'province',
    'area', 'oblast', 'administrative zone', 'region',
    'abandoned', 'historical', 'destroyed', 'religious', 'historical_capital'
  )
)
AND latitude IS NOT NULL
AND longitude IS NOT NULL;
type NOT IN (...) evaluates to UNKNOWN for rows where type is NULL, silently dropping them. The explicit type IS NULL OR ... keeps null-type rows. Remove the type IS NULL clause only if you want to exclude them.

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JavaScript

const EXCLUDED_TYPES = new Set([
  'county', 'regency', 'prefecture', 'parish', 'banner', 'province',
  'area', 'oblast', 'administrative zone', 'region',
  'abandoned', 'historical', 'destroyed', 'religious', 'historical_capital',
]);

const settlements = cities.filter(
  (c) => !EXCLUDED_TYPES.has(c.type) && c.latitude != null && c.longitude != null
);

​
Python

EXCLUDED_TYPES = {
  'county', 'regency', 'prefecture', 'parish', 'banner', 'province',
  'area', 'oblast', 'administrative zone', 'region',
  'abandoned', 'historical', 'destroyed', 'religious', 'historical_capital',
}

settlements = [
  c for c in cities
  if c.get('type') not in EXCLUDED_TYPES
  and c.get('latitude') is not None
  and c.get('longitude') is not None
]

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Records with No Type

About 1,900 rows have a null type. They are a mix of legitimate places and unclassified entries. For strict settlement queries, the safest signal is the presence of valid coordinates (latitude/longitude not null), and — where available — a non-null population.

Database Schema

Full cities table definition including the type field.

Multi-Level Territories

How overseas territories and dual-modeled entities affect city queries.