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City limits are city limits. Some may be more cohesive than others or better relate a "common sense" understanding of what the city is. They're obviously important when discussing things like what services are offered at a particular address.
Practically, I don't consider city limits to be all that useful on a day to day basis. Indianapolis' city limits constitute all of Marion County, IN, except for separate, distinct municipalities within Marion County. However, a large portion of that area is suburban to even quasi-rural, and is not "urban" in any common sense definition of the term.
The flip side of that are cities with artificially small limits like Greenville, SC. The city population does not reflect at all the size of the metro area.
I find MSA population to be most accurate for judging things like amenities, job market size/depth, etc.
As someone who grew up in NY state, I found it odd that people from NYC were only referring to Manhattan when they talked about "the city". In the area I grew up in, the entire NYC area is "the city".
Detroit is "the city" but is surrounded by Metro Detroit. People who live/work in this area make a distinction between the city and its 'burbs.
Memphis is a bit murkier; "the city" there kind of has more ambiguous borders depending on who you are talking with.
Syracuse is "the city". There is no 'metro' there but they also separate the city from the suburban areas.
Generally speaking from all these comments it's the core urban area. Even here in Mississippi, people use "The City" to refer to the main urban area. I heard and use it plenty of times. This theme isn't unique to specific cities obviously.
Memphis the city is always the city proper ( limits) and doesn't include the surburbs.
When I say "city", mean it literally; within the city limits of the central city of a metro area. I guess most of that comes from seeing many people interchange the words "metro" and "city" all of the time. But, I've heard it used both ways for years.
As someone who grew up in NY state, I found it odd that people from NYC were only referring to Manhattan when they talked about "the city". In the area I grew up in, the entire NYC area is "the city".
What’s worse is that some people don’t even use it to mean all of Manhattan, but only Manhattan South of 96th Street or so. For me, it depends on the context.
When I’m in NYC I mean it as a name for Manhattan only. But when I’m traveling and people ask where I’m from I always tell them “New York”. And then 99% of the time they follow up with “the city”? And I say yes, even if I’m living in Brooklyn or Queens or whatever.
We say "the city" in the Baltimore area due to the same reasons that it is done in St. Louis. There is Baltimore City, which is a independent city, and we have Baltimore County.
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