A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet, but smaller than a town or city. Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New York City and the Saifi Village in Beirut, Lebanon. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings; however, transient villages can occur. Further, the dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, not scattered broadly over the landscape ('dispersed settlement').

Historically, villages were the usual form of community for societies that practise subsistence agriculture, and also for some non-agricultural societies. In Britain, a hamlet earned the right to be called a village when it built a church. In many cultures, towns and cities were few, and were home to only a small proportion of the population. The Industrial Revolution caused many villages to grow into towns and cities; this trend of urbanisation has continued, though not always in connection with industrialisation. Villages have thus been eclipsed in importance as units of human society and settlement.