The two most common terms for describing a city placement strategy are "tall" and "wide". They are opposite ends on a sort of quality vs quantity spectrum. Tall describes a strategy where you found only a few cities (usually <=4) and focus on growing them and building them into metropolises. Wide is the opposite where you focus on founding a large quantity of cities rapidly but don't put very much effort into growing each individual one. The most extreme tall strategy would be to do a one city challenge whereas the extreme wide strategy would be to never stop founding cities as long as there is room to put them.

Each strategy has pros and cons for example: taller civs tend to be more culturally advanced and are more able to build national/world wonders whereas wider civs can be more religiously dominant and field larger militaries. Despite these tradeoffs, it is generally accepted by the community that employing a relatively tall, science-focused strategy is the best plan in most scenarios but it is fun to try other strategies as well. There are plenty of guides out there that go into more detail than this post but this is the basic concept.