"Downtown" vs. "City Center"

[thenetwork]

Driving I-96 into Detroit has a few different controls:  Detroit, DOWNTOWN (all in CAPS) then Civic Center by the time you reach I-75.

I guess Civic Center is "Downtown" Downtown Detroit!!   

[TheStranger]

Although I-280 is signed for "Downtown San Francisco" at a couple of points, and "downtown" is used as a destination on VMSes on US 101 north along the Bayshore Freeway...

I can't help but wonder, after all this time, what IS "downtown San Francisco?"

I've always considered it to be the "original" street grid bounded by Van Ness, Market, and The Embarcadero (which thus includes much of the San Francisco civic center area and City Hall); one of my really good friends (a longtime SF resident) limits it to the Financial District.  And still there's also the collection of skyscrapers and development in the South of Market area, which I technically don't consider downtown SF at all, but fits seamlessly with the traditional north-of-Market density.

[Bamaroadgeek]

I-20/59 in Birmingham has signs for "22nd St/Downtown" and I-65 has "4th St/Downtown".

[Road Hog]

I'm sure in Germany they have the same argument over "Zentrum" vs. "Mitte." 

[UptownRoadGeek]

New Orleans is IH 10 is signed "New Orleans Business District" too.  though I haven't seen any indication of it on the VMSs, but it has been a while since I drove in NOLA that much. 
Here in Texas I also see downtown listed on the signs, especially here in Houston, and the VMS usually say "10 MIN to Downtown."  I have only seen City Center in Philly now that I think of it; and only seen downtown aside from NOLA

NOLA VMS signs usually read CBD. Can't speak for other places, but the usage in New Orleans is because locally the "term" downtown refers to a completely different part of town than the Central Business District. Uptown and Downtown are more so geographic terms versus exact locations/districts.

[tdindy88]

Traveling across Indiana, I recently realized that "Business District" is the prefered use to describe the downtown on INDOT highways.

[Duke87]

There's also the option of using "Center City" instead of "City Center". Quebec uses "Centre-Ville", which literally translates to the former.

As for NYC, "Downtown" and "Uptown" can be places as well as directions ("Uptown Girl"), with the note that they describe large swaths of Manhattan, not specific neighborhoods. "Lower Manhattan" can be used to mean either the entire area below where the streets are numbered or specifically the financial district (bounded roughly by Chambers Street and the Brooklyn Bridge). Lately some idiot kids have taken to referring to the latter as "FiDi" - but no real New Yorker uses this name.

[english si]

There's also the option of using "Center City" instead of "City Center". Quebec uses "Centre-Ville", which literally translates to the former.

Yes, but French has a noun-adjective order, so everything sounds backwards: eg table rouge (lit: table red). "Center City" is something that will be used as exhibit A over here when us Brits mock you for being totally incompetent at using the English language, other than to butcher it.

It would be worse than the American love affair with utilizing Latinates/faux-Latinates instead of the using simpler Anglo-Saxon words that mean the same thing and then having the gall to mock the English for using (sorry, utilizing) long words.

[Roadsguy]

Apparently most people in Philadelphia call it "center city," but the signs all say "Central Phila" since they're mostly for people from other places who aren't familiar with the city.

[agentsteel53]

I'm sure in Germany they have the same argument over "Zentrum" vs. "Mitte." 

I don't think I ever noticed a "mitte" in Germany.  plenty of "zentrum", though: it is a standard of autobahn design to start posting the zentrum once one gets fairly close to the outskirts of town, as most autobahn mainlines act as bypasses of the main urbanization.

then again, in Germany I drove 99% autobahns, so maybe "mitte" shows up on the non-freeway roads?