> San Francisco is also somewhat unusual in that its metro area has a different name ("Bay Area"). I routinely use "San Franciso" to mean "the San Francisco Me

> San Francisco is also somewhat unusual in that its metro area has a different name ("Bay Area"). I routinely use "San Franciso" to mean "the San Francisco Metropolitan Area." I assume "Bay Area" is more of a local thing. There's nothing different about "how Australian's do cities" in the sense OP is talking about. You have a central "City of" and a lot of similar, or smaller sized "City of," "Town of," that compose the area we think of as "the city."