In Netherland it traditionally means the place has city rights. But Den Haag (The Hague) never had city rights (being the seat of the count of Holland), so despite being 500k large, it's technically not a city. Though in all other aspects it really is. A much younger city, Almere (200k+), a fairly new suburb of Amsterdam but now the 5th largest city in the country, is far too young for such city rights. But we also have "cities" that have only a few hundred inhabitants.

The province of Friesland famously has 11 cities, but many of those are tiny, and it doesn't include several of the largest towns that are not technically cities.

One thing I learned from the comments of that video (Lennart Regebro):

> In Sweden, the concept of "city" was removed in 1971. Everything became just municipalities.

> This annoyed Stockholm, so in 1983, Stockholm municipality simply renamed itself "Stockholm Stad" (Stockholm City). That pissed Malmö and Göteborg off, and they also promptly renamed themselves to be cities. Today 14 municipalities n Sweden claim to be cities.

Some places in the US define what a city is, but it can be very small - Fourth class: Cities with 9,999 or fewer residents.

It has more to do with what services the city provides vs the size (cities provide trash pickup, etc).