Is there any real difference between a city and a town in Texas? It feels like a city should be substantively different than a town; maybe a city has a more dense downtown, or population is above a certain size. Texas law disagrees

The Local Government Code, codified in 1987, did away with the distinction of city, town, or village and loosely replaced those terms with type A, B, or C cities.

There are no towns in Texas, only cities. The effective distinction between the types of city are its form of government and what level of property tax it can levy. The government is either a city council (type A and B) or a board of comissioners (C). Property tax is the primary form of funding for cities in the US, so this distinction does impact the scale and quality of services (roads, utilities, etc) provided.

Texas law distinguishes between cities through what powers it allocates to the local government. “Home rule” cities are granted the right to create and enforce any ordinance that isn’t preempted by higher tiers of law (county, state, federal), while “general law” cities are only granted specific powers granted to them by county or state government.

So every named incorporated place in Texas is a city¹, but some cities (home rule, type A) are more of city than others.