Actually the term "village" isn't very common in the South, so I suppose you can make the case it IS unusual...although the term "fishing village" is used....I suspect that's where it comes from.
Also, technically, a population of 25 thousand is a city...New York City actually shouldn't be called a City, its a megalopolis. People from Los Angeles or Chicago would call a 50k population a "town" but its not...its a city...a town is a lot smaller. NY, LA, Chic, Philly et al have gone past what a "city" is. I can't remember the cutoff for the terms though..but it doesn't take much to be a "city". I guess I'm going to have to use a search engine and refresh my memory from the class I took on this 10 years ago.
Those definitions vary widely, from state to state. Illinois, apparently calls some pretty large cities "villages." It's part of their state structure, I guess.
In any case there was nothing insulting meant by calling those little towns in LA villages. It's just a turn of the phrase.
And those were fishing villages, to be sure.
>>>a town is a lot smaller.
In NY state, a town is actually a civil division and in no way relates to the number of people living within it. I'm a former resident of the Village of Lakewood and the Town of Busti. Counties are broken-up into townships, sort of like states are broken up into counties (or parishes). Here in NC, they don't seem to have such distinctions. Federalism at work.