How many cities in total does the USA have?

After processing the file with a custom-made script, I find that nine types of places are listed by the Census: borough, Census Designated Place (CDP), city, comunidad, county, municipality, town, urbana, and village. I consider that three of these -- borough, CDP, and county -- do not qualify as self-governing entities. For each of the six remaining types of place, below are the number identified as such.

city 10,016
comunidad 147
municipality 1
town 4,431
urbana 78
village 3,770
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total 18,443

I therefore conclude that there are 18,443 cities, towns, villages, and other such governing groups in the United States. In case you're wondering, the sole place identified as a municipality is Anchorage.

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=509183

I'm not sure how complete this list is, however, it consists of 262 U.S. "cities" and lists them by population with this intro:

"The following table lists the incorporated places in the United States with a population of more than 100,000 as estimated by the United States Census Bureau on July 1, 2007."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population

Because there is more than one definition for the word "city," I'll include lists with population counts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities,_towns,_and_villages_in_the_United_States