What is the word for nicknamed sections of cities ?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Where I live we have two major cities. They are not “big” cities though. South Bend has a pop of approx 100K, and Mishawaka about a pop of about 47k.

South Bend has an area of town called “River Park.” This is not a park, at all, but an area of about one sq. mile of old businesses and homes.

Mishawaka also has one of these specially nicknamed areas of it’s own, called “Twin Branch.” Named after the once famous Lincoln Highway which splits at that point.

My question is, what is the “title” of these nicknamed areas, within cities? They have the same zip codes as the rest of town, and the mailing addresses are the city name not the “nickname” of that area.

Would this be called a burrough, sub-division, village, or something else?

2

Quarters, from the French quartier. As in “the Latin quarter” or “the French quarter”.

3

Sounds like you’re looking for a term to describe an undefined (by formal boundaries), but generally homogeneous area within a larger municipality. Right?

I’d say “neighborhood.” “District” and “region” also fit the bill. (Although “district” has a formal sense when used in terms of zoning and congressional/local representation.)

Be careful about some of your other terms. Things like “villages” and “boroughs” are strictly (or I should say, legally) defined entities.

4

If I understand the OP correctly, it is also possible that these areas might have once been separate towns that have now been annexed into a larger city(?)

When someone here in Columbia asks me where I live, I say “Forest Acres.” This indicates the general part of the city where I live, but it is also a town. There are signs saying “Now Entering the City of Forest Acres,” and it has its own city hall and police. However, the city of Columbia provides me with water service, and my address is Columbia.

There are several such entities here, which were, I think, formerly incorporated towns in their own right. I have always only heard them referred to as “the Forest Acres area,” “the Arcadia Lakes area,” “the Shandon neighborhood.” Doesn’t make for a very descriptive terminology.

5

Nope, these are not, nor ever have been “separate” towns. They have always just been a “nicknamed area” for certain parts of the town.

6

In my city we have different areas. It’s not just a few that are named off but all the city is and we call them ‘communities’ Like I live in Woodlands right at the edge of Woodbine (it gets confusing with us sometimes…) my Aunt lives in Braeside my former Ranger leader in Oakridge and there are plenty of others (the ones I listed are in a small grouping… there are soooo many more)

From what I understand here a few of these communities were once towns… the city just grew and over took them like we might absorb another community eventually. (If things keep growing at the rate they do that is) I think it helps to get a better idea of what area of the city your in… cuz you could say just SW, SE, NW or NE and those are huge areas which could be downtown or at the very edge…

7

Local customs and legal definitions of naming areas of territory and defining municipal boundaries vary WIDELY from place to place around the U.S.

For example, I grew up in New England, where there is no unincorporated land. (OK, not NONE, but in New Hampshire, for example, where I grew up there was perhaps a couple hundred square miles in the whole state that was officially unincorporated). Everything was either a “city” or a “town” which depended solely upon the type of government of the locality, not the population. Cities have mayoral forms of government. Towns have “council” forms of government, usually in the form of a “board of selectmen.” I grew up in the Town of Hudson, NH; which has a population of about 30,000 people. For contrast, the City of Claremont has a population of about 10,000 people. Both towns and cities are considered “incorporated” places, and there is darned near nowhere in New England (other than perhaps northeastern Maine) that isn’t part of a town or a city.

Many large cities around the nation have absorbed neighboring towns and cities, and these areas vary widely with regard to level of local autonomy and local naming practice. New York City, for example, absorbed Brooklyn, Astoria, Jamaica(both part of the borrough of Queens), The Bronx, Staten Island, etc. Georgetown was absorbed by what later became Washington D.C. Roxbury, Charlestown, Dorchester, Allston, and Brighton all used to be seperate towns around Boston; they are now all considered part of Boston legally, even if they have retained some of their local character. Some neighborhoods grow up locally inside of greater cities, like Lakeview or Hyde Park in Chicago, and some independent cities exist inside of metro areas that makes them indistinguisbible from the larger city; Toronto and Los Angeles have areas like this.

Mailing address gives little indication as to political or cultural boundaries that really exist. “New York, NY” will only deliver to addresses on Manhatten; Brooklyn, NY for example, is a separate mailing address. Northern New Castle County Delaware has the opposite extreme; Officially there are only 5 mailing addresses: Wilmington, Newark, Hockessin, Bear, and New Castle; even though there are DOZENS more “towns” in these areas.

Ultimately, where am I heading with this? There is no “official” system as to what to call these areas. Neigborhood is a safe term; if you say “I come from the River Park neighborhood of South Bend” it sounds fairly normal. Unless people from River Park use a different term locally like “village” or “borrough” or “community” or “quarter.”

8

Atlanta is rife with such named neighborhoods, communities, and districts, so much so that those areas that didn’t necessarily grow up with them have acquired them from the local habit of having some shorthand name for most such areas.

Partly, this is a function of the city having been pretty much leveled by Sherman’s troops in the Recent Unpleasantness, so that after the city began to grow and rebuild, new transportation technologies like rail lines, trolleys, and later cars and buses, allowed the wealthy and upper-middle-class residents to live farther from the center of the city, leading to the rise of distinct suburbs that, though never formal municipal entities, have a distinct character and fairly well defined limits. Among these are Grant Park, Inman Park, Ansley Park, Druid Hills, Garden Hills, Brookhaven, Morningside, Lenox Park, Peachtree Hills, Candler Park, Collier Heights, etc. Others were originally “company towns”, almost entirely owned by a factory, plant, or mill located there, such as Cabbagetown and Scottdale. Still others were always less well-defined and developed more organically, such as Midtown, Buckhead, Little Five Points, Virginia-Highlands, Toco Hills, Oak Grove, and so forth.

As for what they’re called, I use “area”, “neighborhood”, “district”, and “community”, more or less in that order of frequency. FWIW, I think the Bureau of the Census recognizes the concept of “named places” that, while not legally established, are nevertheless commonly accepted geographic designations.

9

Around the San Francisco East Bay area, Oakland, etc. the older poor areas by the docks are the “lowlands”.

10

To be precise, the Census Bureau designated places that they have names for as … Census Designated Places or CDP.

The US Board of Geographic Names refers to places as “Populated Places” or PPL.