Speaking as a former Haifan… we wish.
Don’t get me wrong - it’s a great town, and it was a wonderful place to grow up. It’s just that there’s a reason I live in Tel Aviv now, and it’s not because I found life in Haifa too stimulating.
Souzhou, with its beautiful canals, has been called China’s Venice, at least in tourist literature.
Iowa City has been called “the Athens of the Midwest.”
Bucharest the “Paris of the East” or “Little Paris of the East.”
I have a t-shirt, in maize and blue, that reads, “Harvard–The Michigan of the East”.
Notably absent from that list is Birmingham, which has more miles of canal than Venice and has more canals (by volume of water) than any city in the world. Of course, it’s a Sharia-dominated hellhole these days, so they might have filled them in by now. 
Estacada is the Wasilla of Oregon. I made that up.
Burlington is the New York of northern Vermont.
I don’t know what this means. What or where is Ouray?
In GQ this is a badge of honor.
Someone called New York Crazytown-on-Hudson, which fits OP, sort of. EBWhite?
ETA: “maize” is a color?
I guess all the Chinatowns around the world count too. (If not, they do now.) Little Italy, NYC. Little Odessa (Brighton Beach, Brooklyn). Little Tokyo (where’s that)? Doesn’t SF have a Koreatown?
A fun thread here was on "Americatowns" around the world.
The greatest golden hue around, “yellow” having unflattering connotations of cowardice. But yeah, it’s yellow.
The Chinese I know don’t seem to like this characterization. “You mean Venice is the Suzhou of the West” is the response I got.
Similarly if you call Tsinghua the MIT of China an alumnus is liable to retort, “MIT is the Tsinghua of the USA.”
Not really, but there is a Japantown.
Ouray Colorado, lovely mountain town surrounded by high, snowy peaks.
Don’t forget higher education.
Duke is the Harvard of the South (ditto Vanderbilt, Tulane and Ole Miss)
Stanford is the Harvard of the West (don’t tell Claremont)
Washington University (aka University of Michigan, Northwestern, Notre Dame or the University of Chicago) is the Harvard of the Midwest
McGill was the Harvard of the North, but now it’s apparently the University of Toronto.
And, according to Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, the University of Phoenix is the Harvard of the Internet.
I thought of these, and similar, but even I thought that would trend out of control…
[ps City College, CUNY, used to be called the poor man’s Harvard (it was free) or the Harvard of the Jews (City’s quality and the anti-Semitic numerus clausus of Harvard.]
Little Havana, Miami.
But these kinds are not so much trying to gain luster by reflection as they are handy ethnic ids.
On Suzhou, they are right on the money. Much older, more extensive canals, much bigger canals.
Nashville is the Athens of the South.
A recent book referred to Pittsburgh as “The Paris of Appalachia,” and that title has been picked up by a travel-related ad campaign.
I have a feeling that whoever names some cities the “Paris” of wherever has never been to Paris.