"The City" makes sense when you are near a large city. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and you would hear "the city" a lot. When I moved to Oakland, you heard

"The City" makes sense when you are near a large city. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and you would hear "the city" a lot. When I moved to Oakland, you heard SF described as "the city" a lot. When I go visit friends in Brooklyn and they say lets go into "the city", its a generic name, but we all know what they mean.