New England town the Massachusetts Constitution requires a town to have a population of at least 10,000 people before it can switch its government from a town meeting form to a city form. Nevertheless, even without a hard and fast population limit for city status, the practical threshold to become a city seems to be higher in the three southern New England states than in the three northern New England states. In Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, almost every city has at least 10,000 people, and all but a few have at least 20,000. In Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, however, there are
Geology of Rhode Island Pleistocene glaciations. The state's geology is part of the broader geology of New England. Rhode Island is divided into two distinct physiographic regions. The Eastern Highlands occupy the northwestern interior of the state, near the state line with Connecticut while the majority of the state's land area is grouped with the larger Atlantic Coastal Plain that extends along the eastern seaboard of the US. Rhode Island is the only state in New England formed entirely atop basement rock from the microcontinent Avalonia. The bedrock of Rhode Island first took shape with the emergence of a volcanic arc near a subduction