IMHO, the quintessential urban fantasy series is The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.
From Wikipedia:
I’d be curious to know about whether people who like urban fantasy like magical realism and/or high fantasy…or vice versa.
I ask because I don’t care for either high fantasy or magical realism, but I enjoy the occasional urban fantasy novel. Maybe it’s because urban fantasy tends to be funny and because the magic is usually at least somewhat logical.
If you’re including Laura Esquivel, also include Alejo Carpentier and Carlos Fuentes in that list. 
Both wrote short stories in the magical realism genre, or as one teacher used to tell us “lo real maravilloso” (the marvelous real?). There is some argument about those, lumping them or separating the two concepts. But from my side, the difference is much more subtle (if any) compared to urban fantasy vs magical realism.
Midnight’s Children is also usually described as Magical Realism. So is the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
American Gods is Urban Fantasy.
I think that the difference is “pulp” vs. capital L Literature. Its a snobbery thing - where in the bookstore is the book sold? If its sold in the SF&F aisle, its Urban Fantasy. If its sitting in Fiction and Lit, its Magical Realism.
Chabon talked about this a lot when he published The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.
Yes! However, in that series, the “real world” is heavily outclassed! I pity the Chicago Police Department in that world; they’re totally out of their league! The fantasy intrusion into the real world is so overt, so profound, it’s getting close to “superhero fantasy!”
I can groove on high fantasy. I’ve read a fair amount of C.J. Cherryh and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Lord of the Rings is one of my very favorite books.
But my greatest fondness is way down in the gutter, with Heroic Fantasy (Swords and Sorcery) and Urban Fantasy. I’ve read some of Jim Butcher’s non-Dresden fantasy, and it’s pretty good. (“Middle Fantasy,” I guess you might call it.)
Laura Esquivel is considered by some to be pulp magical realism. And many of the books by Isabel Allende, magical realism or not, are pulp books.
I wonder if also part of the difference is cultural/linguistic. I mean, I have read Laura Esquivel. It was not considered in my literature classes at the same level as Gabo.
I still think a big difference between magical realism and others is that the magical or supernatural part of the story is… well, not really noted? While in many other types of genres, the magic may be considered everyday stuff and nobody raises an eyebrow, at least it is somehow acknowledged. Acknowledged and with a set of rules.
I mean, IIRC in 100 years of solitude, what one of the main characters considered “magical” was a demonstration of an early freezer! That his daughter (or granddaughter?) later went on to ascend the heavens was not perceived nearly as weird! Also, there is no rhyme or reason, if something magical happes it just… happens. No one, not even the character, questions the fact that he is constantly followed by a flock of yellow butterflies.
Yup. Magical Realism is published in trade paperback or even hardback format. Urban fantasy comes in mass market paperbacks–or Kindle! The categories are mostly for marketing.
Michael Chabon is a great example of an excellent writer who doesn’t much care about categories. He won serious “literary” credentials early in his career but is proud of his Hugo & his Nebula awards. His Gentleman of the Road was partly a tribute to Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd & Greymouser stories. Leiber, of course, invented the phrase “swords & sorcery”–and wrote science fiction, fantasy and urban fantasy. (I think Our Lady of Darkness is more “urban fantasy” than Conjure Wife.)
Leiber was one example of a fine writer who suffered from being limited to the crap paperback section of the bookstore. Famously, Kurt Vonnegut invented Kilgore Trout (Theodore Sturgeon, anyone?) as the archetype–whose excellent books could only be found in the corners of crummy used bookstores. Much of Vonnegut’s stuff is science fiction, but he avoided the genre ghetto…
I have an SF category on my Kindle. Into which I put fantasy, science fiction, magical realism, horror, etc…
Vonnegut kicked and screamed and threw a public hissy fit to be removed from the science fiction ghetto which he believed -correctly - that editors and critics were putting him in. He got out by renouncing and denouncing the field and scrupulously avoiding all contact until he was finally too famous to care. Chabon talks about how cool genre is, but as far I can determine he’s never published a story in a genre magazine.
Genre is both a publishing category - yes, you can tell a genre book by its cover - and a literary refuge bin. As Vonnegut put it:
If you’re literary you can “transcend” genre and use it to play your literary games. It does not work in reverse. Leiber and Sturgeon were genre and always will be. Magical realism is generally literary and therefore literature. Urban fantasy is rarely either. That’s part snobbery, part audience reception, and part truth.
IANALiterary Critic, but I see a big difference in the two. That’s possibly because I was introduced to magical realism by way of a “Best Fantasy of the year” anthology right when magical realism was really hitting it big.
Major Disclaimer - the only exposure I have is aforesaid anthology and “Like Water for Chocolate”. This is based on what I percieved in those stories.
Urban Fantasy (and most other fantasy stories) tend to use fairy tale & mythical objects, creatures, and characters. Not just werewolves and vampires, but dragons, unicorns, zombies, house elves, kobolds, dwarves, the Sidhe (often by name), maenads, etc, etc.
In fantasy, magic is deliberate - usually requiring some sort of ritual or at least a conscious act of will. There’s a distinct delineation between the normals and the paranormals.
In urban fantasy, the magic is kept hidden, either through effort on the part of the paranormals, or through blinders worn by normals. In other fantasies, if magic is considered normal, the events take place in a different universe, such as Middle-Earth or Xanth.
By contrast
Magical realism does not invoke well-established fantasy tropes. You might get a ghost (more of a revenant - the personality existing after the body is dead) or a witch (but only the village wise woman/herbalist type), but none of the overtly magical races.
Magic is a normal part of life, and is generally accidental. In fact, magical events are usually not noticed by the characters as anything but an event outside their normal experience. There’s little to no acknowledgement that the event is outside the realm of what a normal person would consider possible. They are told much like folk tales - the woman who cries so much that it leaves a layer of salt thick enough to sweep up and use for seasoning is more like the Paul Bunyan story about how “it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard.”
When I was a child, I had an experience where for just a few minutes I was in a cloud of monarch butterflies. That was a magical experience, and that is what I think the “magical” in the phrase magical realism means, except turned up a notch.
Zyada: I like your analysis – and love your experience with butterflies! I think you may be right: that kind of “revelation” or “visitation” or “immanence” is a kind of discriminant.
I’m also thinking of Fritz Leiber’s “Change Wind” stories, which usually entailed some poor guy getting caught up in a deep world-change absolutely beyond his control. “The Nice Girl with Five Husbands,” or “When the Change Winds Blow” or a couple others. Although the effect is couched in pseudo-scientific terms, it really is a magical effect, in dramatic tone at least.
I read (and write) a lot of urban fantasy. I’m not particularly into high fantasy, though there are some novels I’ve liked. I don’t generally care for magical realism at all. The fact that the magic isn’t remarkable to anyone in the stories is far too much suspension of disbelief for me.
The superhero genre, now in its maturity, is interesting, given that it portrays “our real world” and yet no one is astonished about the existence of super-powered individuals. Instead of, “Oh my gosh, somebody who can fly!” it’s “Oh, that must be Ms. Marvel, because Spider-Woman has glider-vanes under her arms.” The “magic” has become an accepted part of the setting. It’s no longer “remarkable.”
“Super Realism?”
If the story was about a normal person who temporarily gained super powers in order to achive a specific goal (e.g. he got so mad that lazers shot out of his eyes and fried the criminal who was assaulting his family to dust. Then he goes back to his normal job as a baker and no one ever talks about it really.) then it’s magical realism. Superhero stories are about the superhero. That’s fantasy. The distinction come from what the story is about and how the magic is used. Is it a device like an allegory or metaphore, or is it part of the plot that the story revolves around?