Talk:The City

Real Cities

I took this out entirely. A few years back, it was tried, and it just got silly, as everybody was including every city that had 'The City' as it's nickname. The British metronym for the financial district is a possibility, anything else is just listmaking. 99.226.251.205 (talk) 05:04, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

This is not unnecessary. All of the other entries are formatted in the same manner. Here are examples:

• The City (album), an album by Vangelis
• The City (book), a book by Maxmilian Weber
• The City (group), a group comprised of Charles Larkey, Danny Kortchmar and Carole King
• The City (play), a play by Clyde Fitch

Thoughts? Let's achieve consensus on this one. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 17:11, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

This is utterly ridiculous. The City of London (which is NOT London) is called, written, etc, "The City" as the actual name of the place (with a capital T, capital C). It's on road signs, it's on maps, it's the name given to the UK financial services sector (in the same way the US sector is called "Wall Street")... anyone who knows anything about the history and geography of London knows that the City of London is called The City (even just "City"[1] though I regard that as laziness on maps!) more often in fact than "City of London". David (talk) 09:56, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

A list of cities that refer to the CBD as "The City" is unnecessary. I think most cities of reasonable size would refer to the CBD as the city, including mine, Brisbane. (124.171.162.168 (talk) 04:54, 9 February 2010 (UTC))

Thank goodness, consensus! I've removed this:

[Specific real cities]

!-- The following are commonly referred to, in written as well as spoken context, as The City (capital T, capital C); many cities or city centres are often referred to as "the city", or "the city of.." for instance, but these places are given the proper name "The City". --

• New York City, its Manhattan borough is often referred to as The City, in contrast to the other four boroughs.
• Toronto is known by Ontario residents as The City
• San Francisco is often referred to as The City by Bay Area residents
• Chicago is referred to as The City by surrounding area residents
• Melbourne City Centre is called The City by residents

… cygnis insignis 18:16, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Minneapolis/St. Paul

"The Cities" redirects to this page. However, I think that as a plural, it warrants recognition. None of the other cities listed here are close to one another, and I know that people in my area (Southern Minnesota) commonly refer to MSP as "The Cities". DanielDPeterson + talk 04:12, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Real cities #2

I've taken out San Francisco again. However, I think the usage of "the City" to refer to a city centre by the inhabitants of the surrounding area is notable, so I've put something in - I'm not sure if this is precisely the right formulation, improvements are welcome, but I think something needs to be put there because (1) "the City" being used to refer to a city centre is a real phenomenon and (2) more importantly, this will help to discourage future editors from adding their own little city to the list. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:22, 7 June 2013 (UTC) For the benefit of the editor who keeps adding back San Francisco - the reason it is not appropriate here is because it is non-notable. Even if it is true that some people in the local area refer to "san Francisco" as "the City", it is not worth including in the dab page, because any large city, especially its city centre is called "the City" by surrounding inhabitants. Certainly, the article San Francisco does not say "San Francisco, also known as The City". It does not even mention "The City" as one of the nicknames. There is negligible chance that someone would come to Wikipedia, type in "the City" and expect to see San Francisco come up. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:37, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

LOL PalaceGuard008 PWND 2601:989:4300:20B0:9D10:11C1:25E6:6BDE (talk) 06:05, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 19 December 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Withdrawn by nominator per WP:SNOWCLOSE. Unfortunately, a move is pretty unlikely to pass. --Nevé–selbert 15:29, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

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The City → The City (disambiguation) – I think The City should redirect to City of London as a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT. The City is pretty much the Wall Street of Great Britain, and "the City" is an extremely popular and common nickname to refer to the UK capital (specifically its financial district as a metonym, see wikt:City#Proper noun). I recently created The city without the capital "C" to The City dabpage, so anyone searching for "the city" or "THE CITY" would not get redirected to City of London (therefore, WP:SURPRISE shouldn't be an issue). The City of London is inarguably the most important city in the world barring New York City (for now at least), so I doubt it's too much to ask in requesting this move. A hatnote can easily be added accordingly, anyway. --Nevé–selbert 16:30, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose since this move doesn't seem to represent a worldwide opinion, and thus is probably subject to systemic bias. Steel1943 (talk) 21:45, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose. I can't see the London use as being the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC over all the other topics combined, in particular the New York and San Francisco uses.--Cúchullain ^t/c 22:50, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose per the above and the current setup makes it much easier to spot incorrect incoming links. Lugnuts ^{Precious bodily fluids} 08:23, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose. "The City" is a common phrase for many large cities as well the title of numerous works. older ≠ wiser 13:08, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose. "The City" doesn't appear to mean the City of London for many outside of Europe. Nohomersryan (talk) 14:09, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose no evidence has been provided that London is the primary meaning for this term.--72.0.200.133 (talk) 15:37, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose move and WP:SNOW close per all above.  ONR  (talk)  21:37, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"Real Cities" redux

"The City" is basically a pronoun used to refer to an urban area from a nearby suburban area. If someone on a farm said "I'm heading into town", would that mean that town should be added to a list article on Wikipedia? If someone on a foothill said "I'm going to climb the mountain", the same? I've personally heard Durham, NC; Boston, MA; Phoenix, AZ and Salt Lake City, UT referred to as "The City".

No one would refer to, say, London, as "The City" if they were standing in New York in a million years.

That section is completely silly and needs to go. - Immigrant laborer (talk) 21:00, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

This seems to be a perennial debate, and we definitely need a better way of explaining and policing it.

However, London specifically is absolutely justified, because it doesn't refer to London itself:

• Firstly, it refers not to the whole of London but to a specific part of London, one of two historic cities which form the core of the modern city (the other is the City of Westminster).
• Secondly, it's used throughout the UK to refer to the financial centre based there, just as in the US you might use the expression "Wall Street", referring not to any street of that name, and quite possibly referring to companies that have no presence there.

At various times, wording to better explain this has been added to the article, but removed because this is classed as a disambiguation page, so technically subject to strict rules in the Manual of Style. I think a case needs to be made for an exception to the normal style, and a proper discussion added of "whichever city is nearby" vs "notably distinctive uses". - IMSoP (talk) 16:09, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Specifically, it looks like this edit by Cuchullain removed all the context with a broad "per manual of style" edit summary, leading us back to the status quo ante where well-meaning editors will add every city that could conceivably have this nickname. - IMSoP (talk) 16:16, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Dab pages are just for pointing readers in the right direction, they don't benefit from long explanations. Readers who type in or click on the phrase "The City" looking for the City of London don't need the full background on what the City of London is, they'll get that at the article. The better solution is just to remove entries that aren't relevant, which I've now done.--Cúchullain ^t/c 16:52, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but if you look at the history of this article and this talk page, you'll see that that's no solution at all. We will be doomed to an endless cycle of people adding more entries, people removing everything including London, etc, etc.

I appreciate the general principle of disambig pages being minimal, but every rule has its exceptions, and I think there's crucial context here without which the list is meaningless.

In fact, I see that in your latest edit you've left San Francisco in the list. Why? What makes it different from the entries you removed? How would a reader know what's special about these three uses, and how would a well-meaning editor predict whether their addition would meet your criteria or not?

If there are in fact criteria we can agree on for which cities should be listed under that heading, they need to be spelled out somewhere; and in my opinion, that distinction is also useful to readers of the page, so should be part of the article itself. - IMSoP (talk) 17:40, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

I think the standard MOS criteria is sufficient that all entries should be titled, or cover something titled, this name. That's why London, Manhattan (but not New York) and San Francisco are here - they actually cover "The City" as a name for the topic. Like all dab pages and articles, there's a chance that passersby will add irrelevant information, but I don't think that's going to stop by adding overlong explanations here. It didn't help when they were there before. What helps is periodically cleaning up the dab pages.--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:49, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Where exactly do you see justification in the San Francisco article? In the phrase "or, as locals call it, "The City""? Everybody calls the city the live in, or near to, "the city", and the article used as reference for that sentence confirms that "if you are within a reasonable distance of another city, people will have no idea what you’re talking about".

The difference with the City of London, and I think also Manhattan, is that they're exceptions to this rule, because they don't just refer to "the nearest city".

Is it really that big a problem to include a short sentence in the article so that we don't have to keep having this debate over and over again?

The term "The City" is often used locally to refer to the current or nearest city. Exceptions to this include:

• The City of London, a part of modern London; also used to refer to the whole British financial services sector
• Manhattan, a part of New York

I'm sure the wording can be further improved, and maybe made shorter, but I think this is better than what we have now. - IMSoP (talk) 18:40, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

As for "it didn't help before", it looks like I linked the wrong edit earlier; the one I actually meant was this one, which didn't remove any entries, only the explanatory text. I think it's no coincidence that a month later the list started growing again. If you hadn't removed the first bullet point, that editor might well have thought NYC was covered by the "any sizeable city" clause. - IMSoP (talk) 18:49, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

I left San Francisco in because the article covers use of "The City". It appears to be common in local use (much more so than most cities), so there's a good chance that some of eight million people in the area might search for it under that name. I don't feel especially strongly about it.

I also object to removing the phrasing "'The City', a term for..." In fact, I think that makes it clearer that this list shouldn't include every random city than the additions.--Cúchullain ^t/c 19:46, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't think the verbiage about "the British financial services sector" is necessary, but don't strongly object to adding it to the City of London entry if others think it may be helpful.

As for the addition about "the current or nearest city," I don't think the wording is quite right. I have another solution: adding an entry for "city centre" (which does discuss "The City", and is closer to what most uses are referring to than just the nearest city): "The City", a term used in some contexts for a city centre, the commercial and cultural heart of a city.

--Cúchullain ^t/c 19:46, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Regarding San Francisco, I think we need a much stronger citation for the claim that it's called The City "much more so than most cities"; there are many cities with millions of people who may or may not use this nickname, and accepting that based on the personal experience of editors is the whole problem with this list.

I always feel the phrase "a term for" is redundant; you could say "San Francisco is a term for the 13th most populous city in the United States", but it's more straightforward to just say "San Francisco is the 13th most populous city in the United States". I'm not precious about it, though, if this is the standard wording in disambig pages.

"The British financial services sector" is really a separate definition of "The City", and should perhaps be a separate bullet linking to an appropriate article. It's closely related to the City of London sense, though, so it's tempting to run them together.

I like the idea of linking to city centre as one of the definitions; it sidesteps the objection to adding plain content to disambig pages nicely. Whether it's enough to stop people wanting to add their favourite city, though, I'm not sure - as with San Francisco above, we still need to decide what would be sufficient for a city to be included, and somehow make that clear in the way we list them. - IMSoP (talk) 10:46, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

"The City" is in common use for San Francisco.[2][3][4][5] 27% of locals call it that primarily. I haven't seen anything indicating that this is the case in other cities, where "the city" is an informal term for the downtown/urban core if it's used at all. At any rate, in San Francisco it's common enough that readers might search for it, so it should be included for the purposes of disambiguation. As for other instructions, we could add a hidden note indicating that entries shouldn't be added if it's not covered in the article.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:13, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't see how that local usage is any different from any other local usage referring to any other city as "The City". Everybody in every suburban or rural area refers to the nearest city as "The City". Where I'm from saying "I'm going up to The City" would mean Hickory, NC. --Khajidha (talk) 14:49, 26 December 2018 (UTC)