What is considered being "in the city" nowadays?

[Road Hog]

DFW is so massive that going E-W, you can get off at Exit 94 and still be 94 miles from the zero point of I-30 at Aledo, which isn't even on the western extreme of the Metroplex. Some take it as far west as Mineral Wells.

Going N-S, some consider just crossing over from Oklahoma from 75 miles away to be entering DFW. Not so much yet, but it is heading in that direction. Ellis County is finally wising up to that fact that you can have a cheap house and a 20-minute commute to downtown Dallas.

[Ted$8roadFan]

I live outside of Boston, definitely not part of the City proper. Yet when I travel and tell people where I'm from, I always say Boston. Closer to home, I say my hometown or just outside of Boston. These kinds of distinctions matter locally.

[Scott5114]

Even so, when telling someone outside the area where I'm from, I would say Rochester, and expect it to be understood that I mean the Rochester area and not necessarily the city itself. However, if someone from the Rochester area asked me where I live, I'd be more specific, with reference to the suburb, and possibly even the main road(s) nearest my neighborhood, depending on the context.

This.

Before the 4th grade, I grew up in New Lenox, IL.  Back then, I could go two miles south and hit farmland and gravel roads.  When we were on family vacation somewhere, and I was in the hotel hot tub or whatever, I'd tell people I was from Chicago.  But that isn't quite the same thing.  If you had asked me if I lived in a city or a small town, I'd have told you I lived in a suburb.

When we then moved to a small farming town in a county with no stoplights, we might describe the difference between living "in the city" and living "in a small town".  Different context, different vocabulary.

Fast-forward ten years, and I was attending college near Harlem & Division in River Forest (IL), with an L station a mile away.  Even in an urban environment like that, going downtown could be called "going into the city".

Now I live well within the Wichita city limits.  In pretty much all contexts, I say I live in a city–although I might, on extremely rare occasions, mention my part of town as a "suburban neighborhood".

To tack onto this...I grew up inside the city limits of Goldsby, OK, a town that at the time was so small the biggest retail establishment was a Total station. So any time we went to Norman to buy groceries at the Walmart there, we'd say we're "going into town".

Now I live in Norman. Any time we need to go to Oklahoma City for something, we say we're "going up to the city".

It's all relative.

[kphoger]

If the tallest building near you is the Hampton Inn, you're not "in the city" yet.
If there are not any random stickers on street signs, you're not "in the city" yet.
If there's plenty of on street parking available, you're not "in the city" yet.
If there are more "don't tread on me" bumper stickers than "coexist" bumper stickers, you're not "in the city" yet.
If there are more churches than bars, you're not "in the city" yet.
If there isn't a slight scent of urine and weed in the air, you're not "in the city" yet.
If the closest hardware store is Home Depot, you're not "in the city" yet.
If the drive thru queue is longer than the in-person queue at the coffee shop in the morning, you're not "in the city" yet.

Excellent!  Almost poetry.

[TheStranger]

"In the City" where I am from in NorCal historically meant  being in San Francisco Proper. But that changed since San Jose overtook San Francisco as largest city in NorCal. Now that's been changed to San Francisco being nicknamed as SF ever since.

From what I have seen over the years, "The City" always refers to San Francisco here in the Bay Area, never any other locale.  that doesn't mean that Oakland and SJ aren't seen as major cities either, just that SF is the one that likes to emphasize being called "The City" (as seen by some of the jersey designs for the Warriors).

---

I've lived in suburban San Mateo County for 2/3rds of my life, Davis for school for 4 years, and Sacramento for 7 years:

- I rarely ever say "I'm from San Francisco" (though I was born there and went to a couple of schools there) and try to be specific about being in the suburbs, due to the culture of SF residents/natives being hyper-specific that living near SF is not the same as living within city limits.  Something like the San Francisco Outlets in Livermore, about 45 miles east, is absurd in that context

- SF itself has some neighborhoods that are much more suburban in nature than the rest of the city (the area near Stonestown Mall and the Sunset District in particular), with the Outer Mission almost seamlessly blending into the northern part of Daly City.  The Visitacion Valley district also blends into Daly City's Bayshore district (itself formerly a separate community) and is particularly low-rise.

- Sacramento takes up twice the land area that SF does; I lived in Midtown for about 6 months and then in a suburban area close to Sacramento State University for 6 years, and always made the distinction of where I was when describing my location at the time.

[bing101]

"In the City" where I am from in NorCal historically meant  being in San Francisco Proper. But that changed since San Jose overtook San Francisco as largest city in NorCal. Now that's been changed to San Francisco being nicknamed as SF ever since.

From what I have seen over the years, "The City" always refers to San Francisco here in the Bay Area, never any other locale.  that doesn't mean that Oakland and SJ aren't seen as major cities either, just that SF is the one that likes to emphasize being called "The City" (as seen by some of the jersey designs for the Warriors).

---

I've lived in suburban San Mateo County for 2/3rds of my life, Davis for school for 4 years, and Sacramento for 7 years:

- I rarely ever say "I'm from San Francisco" (though I was born there and went to a couple of schools there) and try to be specific about being in the suburbs, due to the culture of SF residents/natives being hyper-specific that living near SF is not the same as living within city limits.  Something like the San Francisco Outlets in Livermore, about 45 miles east, is absurd in that context

- SF itself has some neighborhoods that are much more suburban in nature than the rest of the city (the area near Stonestown Mall and the Sunset District in particular), with the Outer Mission almost seamlessly blending into the northern part of Daly City.  The Visitacion Valley district also blends into Daly City's Bayshore district (itself formerly a separate community) and is particularly low-rise.

- Sacramento takes up twice the land area that SF does; I lived in Midtown for about 6 months and then in a suburban area close to Sacramento State University for 6 years, and always made the distinction of where I was when describing my location at the time.

Also I seen a shift in the definitions of Silicon Valley. In the past it meant being in areas south of the San Mateo Bridge up to the south end of CA-85 at US-101. But San Francisco got included in the name of Silicon Valley due to Soma and the Financial District where Venture Capitalists companies have their main offices at.



https://www.dailyrepublic.com/all-dr-news/solano-news/solano-county/fairfield-suisun-sits-between-bay-valley/
The definitions over what constitute the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento takes a transitional meaning once you enter places like Solano County, a given how attached to both the County is.

[SectorZ]

I sought assistance from these guys but no help...

[Urban Prairie Schooner]

The city limits of Baton Rouge are far more expansive than what could be considered the 'urban core'. In fact, all of the urbanized southern portion of EBR Parish is considered 'Baton Rouge' from a postal standpoint regardless of location inside or outside actual city limits. Like many medium sized Southern cities that mostly expanded in the 20th century, there is a low gradient of density from urban center to suburb.  However, the neighborhoods that developed before roughly 1950 could reasonably be referred to as urban, though composed of single family housing to a much greater extent than in traditional urban centers.

[Bruce]

Seattle proper includes a lot of suburban neighborhoods that bleed into the neighboring cities, so I would narrow it down to people who live in areas that are denser than the baseline. For Seattle, that's pretty much urban villages and their surrounding bubbles.