I made these changes before I realized what the current community practice is, and although I find this practice incredibly hamfisted and meaningless, until the community can agree on a new, more meaningful and universally understandable set of terms to use with place=*, I concede that some of these changes perhaps should be reversed.

However, I will stand by certain ones even with the current broken OSM definitions. For example, the Rensselaer is a very small area, so it's total population might look the size of a "town," the central core of Rensselaer is just as dense and urban as Albany just across the river. In terms of "human geography" it is really just a part of Albany's urban landscape, and Albany's only train station is in fact in Rensselaer. Besides the fact that Resselaer is chartered as a "city" and is thought of by us locals as a city, it's clearly an urban environment as much as Albany is. If New York was like Europe or Japan, Rensselaer would be a part of Albany, but we just don't organize our communities that way. Rensselaer is a small slice of "city," not a "town" in the slightest.