I’m from New Jersey so where I’m from everyone calls New York City “The City”. I was talking to a client from Lancaster County Pennsylvania and he called Lancaster City “the city” which I thought was ridiculous.

Interesting to hear what “the city” is to people across America


33 comments

  4. I live an hour from Philly, so… Philly.

    I went to school in Lancaster and people definitely called Lancaster City “the city.” It makes sense, in my opinion. There is a bit of a built up city there. Walkable and cute restaurants. If you say you’re going into the city, then yeah, going to the closest city makes sense.

  5. Most often it’s NYC, but if they’re from a rural area, they’ll refer to Providence as “The City”.

    Rhode Island.

  6. DC for me, I live in Maryland

    Edit: lol guess I’m the odd one out. Might be me living just north of DC but I also might just be the weird one

  9. There isn’t one around here that people would refer to as “the city.” Unless they do and I just don’t know because I live in it.

  10. If you said “the city” around Eastern MA/RI/southern NH, it would be understood that you mean Boston, though I’m not sure how common it is to refer to Boston as “the city” as such. I think it’s more of a thing as you get further out into the suburbs.

  12. We are in the middle of Indianapolis, St.Louis and Chicago so people just have to say what city they are going to.

  14. In college I knew a guy from a small railroad town in the far north of California. He called downtown Berkeley ‘the city’.

  17. Ehhh, for some reason that doesn’t really work for San Diego. San Diego is the city, but we don’t call it “the city”. Also, San Diego is pretty sprawling so most people do officially live in San Diego.

  18. Depending on which side im living at the moment but it’s either LA or SF. It’s mostly San Francisco in my vocabulary.

  22. Philadelphia here. People will say, “We live in the city.” or a suburban resident might say “We went out in the city last night.” But people often say “in town” too. Especially older people. It can refer specifically to Center City or Philadelphia as a whole. For example, “I have to go in town tomorrow for an appointment.” It’s one of my favorite local sayings. 

  23. SF Bay here.

    San Francisco is The City.

    Oakland, if you’ve been around here a long time, is The Town.

  24. I’m from Southern California here there’s no city that universally gets called that. If you say “I’m going into the city”, you just mean whichever one is closest.

    Edited to change from California to Southern California based in the commenter below. We like San Francisco fine and enjoy going there, we don’t call it “the city” and we don’t call Los Angeles or San Diego that either.

  25. I’m from northern Michigan. There’s not really a specific city we would reference. Traverse City is a joke compared to NYC, but is the closest “big city”. People near Detroit or Grand Rapids might call those places “the city”

  27. San Francisco will always be The City for me. And that’s what I call it 90% of the time. And we have a somewhat legitimate claim to this title since the Warriors even have a classic logo that just says The City on it

  28. Outstate Minnesota we wouldn’t say the city, we would say “The Cities.”

    We also wouldn’t usually specify Minneapolis or St. Paul specifically. Just that we’re “headed into/down to the cities.”

  29. I grew up in a rural part of TN near the KY/VA border. The closest decent sized city with a mall,
    etc. was 20 minutes away in KY. People in my area called it “going into town.”

  30. Middle Tennessee here when outside of Nashville you would refer to it as “the city” when in Nashville if you are referring to the Broadway area it would be considered “downtown”

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