[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

Do people from the suburbs of say, Seattle, or Boston, or Chicago, not say they're from Seattle, or Boston, or Chicago when they're traveling?

i imagine that most suburbanites in chicagoland would say they are from "chicago" when travelling outside of the region.

you might even get an occasional "chicagoland" from some of the more astute suburbanites.

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

People from Denver's suburbs also tend to refer to virtually the entire city of Denver as, "downtown." I've lived in neighborhoods several miles from downtown that my family would still refer to as "downtown."

i imagine that's pretty common in most metros that get above several million people. the distances to edges start to get so great that those living way out in the exurbs get a warped sense of what "downtown" is.

my wife's friend who lives way the hell out in mchenry county came over to our place for a visit a little while ago and her first response upon arriving was "this is so cool, you guys, you live downtown!".

our home is 6.5 miles NNW of city hall. nowhere remotely near "downtown" from a city perspective.

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

Another trend I've noticed recently, is some people in far-flung parts of the Front Range refer to the city of Denver as "the city" - especially when they're attempting to refer to the city itself as opposed to the entire metropolis which also calls itself "Denver." This is definitely something new. Will it stick? I suspect not. I suspect these people are from the East Coast or something, where they're used to referring to some nearby core city as "The City." It's not a very Colorado thing to do.

the map below (based on data from a dialect study by havard) shows how people answered the question, "What is the city?" The warmer the color, the more people answered "new york city". the cooler the color the more people said something else.

i used to think that "The City" was used in every metro area, more or less exclusively, to delineate the city proper from the burbs, but according to the map, it's most predominately used that way around NYC, Chicago, and SF, with other significant pockets around minneapolis and seattle. in much of the nation, even places thousands of miles away, a shockingly high percentage of people bewilderingly still answered "new york city".


source: https://i.imgur.com/lPpGyzz.png


in chicagoland "The City" and "The Burbs" are very frequently used terms to delineate the two main realms of the metro area, based entirely on the municipal boundaries of the city.

"we're headed into the city tomorrow night to go to the sox game"

"i can't make it, i have a family party at my aunt's house out in the burbs next saturday"