The City: a bustling, dense urban area full of people, tall buildings, businesses, government offices and limited parking (except for our heroes).
The extremes of wealth and poverty are wider here than in a Small Town. With the city's impoverished area on the Wrong Side of the Tracks, there's more criminals and you're more likely to be the victim of a crime. As a result, this is where most Crime and Punishment Series and Police Procedural shows are set. When a Sitcom is set here, it tends to feature a younger, hipper crowd than the usual Dom Com. People are also more cynical in The City, and the Deadpan Snarker abounds. There is also public transportation, which is a good place to get Post-Robbery Trauma. Combine with a bit of dystopian political corruption and a Rogues Gallery of unrepentant lawbreakers, and it's the perfect place for the Superhero to set up shop.
In the land of television, The City is also full of big luxury apartments which even a twentysomething who's just starting out their careers can afford.
A few cities have their own special quirks (especially CSI's Las Vegas). For the most part, The City will feature sprawling central business districts, vibrant ethnic neighborhoods, industrial zones, decaying, crime-ridden ghettos and Abandoned Areas.
Note that the distinction between The City and Suburbia is not always clear-cut; many shows set in The City might deal more with the residential neighborhoods, making it feel like Suburbia with rowhouses (Full House, The Cosby Show, Family Matters). And sometimes the residential neighborhoods, while 100% within the city limits, will have detached single-family homes that aren't even rowhouses and look even more indistinguishable from the suburbs. The go-to city for this is Los Angeles due to its sprawling nature. At the other end of the spectrum, a show set officially in Suburbia may show an assortment of local businesses, events, and institutions that you would typically only find in a city (The Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). However, these towns tend to be fictional; Springfield in particular tends to go from largish city to suburb depending on the needs of the episode.
The peculiar interplay of aspects of Suburbia and The City in the real-world city of Baltimore, Maryland (rural sensibilities + high population density = wacky crime) has made it a popular choice in recent years for Crime and Punishment Series (Homicide: Life on the Street, The Wire). While not primarily a cop show, police work typically figures into the B-plots of Joan of Arcadia, which is set in a fictionalized version of the real-life Baltimore suburb of Arcadia. Of course, it doesn't hurt that David Simon is himself a Baltimore native who wrote a number of non-fiction works that many of those shows are directly based on.
City-related tropes include:
General Tropes- Absurdly Cool City
- Boom Town: A newly established city with rare riches and high population growth.
- Citadel City
- City Guards: A militia which answers to municipal authorities, responsible for keeping order within the city or town and fighting off invaders.
- City in a Bottle: An extremely isolated settlement cut off from the outside world.
- The City Narrows: An area of a city known for crime.
- City Noir: A city of looming buildings, gray skies, drizzling rain and grim detectives.
- City of Adventure: Lots of exciting events frequently happen in this town, so it never gets too quiet and boring here.
- City of Canals: A city cut through by a network of canals.
- City of the Damned: Hell is depicted as an urban environment, comparable to Wretched Hives of the mortal world.
- City of Everywhere
- City of Gold: A legendary town that's supposedly fabulously wealthy.
- City of Spies: A city with a high concentration of active and retired secret agents.
- City on the Water: A city floating on the ocean.
- City People Eat Sushi
- City Planet: An entire planet which has a completely urbanized surface.
- The City vs. the Country: Urban vs rural life.
- Big Town Boredom: Someone grows sick and tired of urban/metropolitan life, and wants to move out to some place that's less densely populated or more rural.
- Small Town Boredom: People who find the rural village or suburban town they came from to be too bland and boring, tend to see larger cities as more exciting and desirable places to live in.
- City Mouse: Someone from the city tries to adjust to life in the country.
- City Slicker: Similar to the City Mouse, but specific to The Wild West.
- Country Mouse: Someone from the country tries to adjust to life in the city.
- Big Town Boredom: Someone grows sick and tired of urban/metropolitan life, and wants to move out to some place that's less densely populated or more rural.
- City with No Name
- Citywide Evacuation
- Developing Nations Lack Cities: Poor countries are stereotyped as being completely rural and lacking any large urbanized cities.
- Domed Hometown: A settlement built under a protective dome.
- Egopolis: Naming a city after yourself.
- Fake Town
- Friendly Local Chinatown: Typical depictions of American Chinese, or other Asian, immigrant neighborhoods.
- Gayborhood: An urban neighborhood filled with LGBT people.
- Ghost Town: A former human settlement (city, town, or village) which is now abandoned.
- Ghost City: A formerly big city that is now a deserted shell of its former glory.
- Urban Ruins: A former city reduced to rubble, with every building showing signs of severe decay.
- Graffiti Town
- The Great Fire: When the entire city burns down.
- The Great Wall: Many older cities had big perimeter walls built for defense against invading armies.
- Walls of Tyranny: The city walls aren't just for keeping intruders out; they're also designed for keeping residents trapped inside.
- Heel–Face Town
- Hidden Elf Village: A settlement carefully hidden from the rest of the world.
- Hive City: A city that consists of stacked and interconnected buildings, resembling an insect hive.
- Holy City: A city that is sacred to a particular religion.
- Hood Film
- Hub City: The most relevant and in some cases only settlement in a game.
- Land of One City: City-states are sovereign countries with very little territory, consisting of only a capital city and some surrounding land.
- Layered Metropolis: A big city with many overlapping bridges, roads, streets, and structures.
- Man of the City: A character makes it their life mission to protect a city.
- Mayor Pain: A city has an evil or incompetent mayor.
- Mega City: A huge city.
- Merchant City: This town is a major trading hub.
- Metropolis Level: A video game level set in some sort of urban environment.
- Mobile City: An entire city that moves around.
- Neon City: Neon lights illuminate their streets at night.
- New Neo City: When a city is destroyed and rebuilt, it gets a "New" or "Neo" prefix in front of its name.
- Pesky Pigeons: These birds are considered to be iconic urban wildlife.
- Please Select New City Name
- Red Light District: An area of a city known for being filled with brothels and strip clubs, inhabited by prostitutes and other sex workers.
- Scienceville: A settlement known for its scientists, inventors, engineers and professional thinkers.
- Shining City: A heavily idealized, perfect city.
- Simulated Urban Combat Area
- Skyscraper City: A city with a ludicrously high skyline.
- Soiled City on a Hill: A Wretched Hive city is destroyed.
- Suburbia: Smaller cities and towns, usually located near a bigger city, or at least part of a metropolitan area.
- Stepford Suburbia: Creepy cookie-cutter suburban towns which are not what they appear to be at first glance.
- Suddenly Significant City
- Superhero Capital of the World: A specific city with a noticeably dense population of superheroes (and usually also of supervillains).
- Supernatural Hotspot Town: A city or town that attracts supernatural creatures.
- Suburban Gothic: Creepy suburbs.
- Take Over the City: The Big Bad's evil goals extend no further than the town they live in, rather than something more grand and ambitious like the whole world.
- Underground City: A populated city located beneath the ground's surface.
- Under City: A formerly-surface-level city which was somehow buried underneath the earth.
- Underwater City: A populated city located beneath the sea's surface.
- Sunken City: A formerly-surface-level city was which was somehow swallowed up by the ocean.
- Underwater Ruins: A former settlement which was buried at sea long ago.
- Sunken City: A formerly-surface-level city was which was somehow swallowed up by the ocean.
- Urban Fantasy: Fantasy stories that take place in a modern city.
- Urban Segregation: All the neighborhoods in this city are blatantly separated by socioeconomic class, race and ethnicity, or other demographic lines.
- Fantastic Ghetto: Fantastic segregation applied to urban neighborhoods.
- Urban Warfare: Military combat fought in city streets, with local civilian residents caught in the middle.
- Capital Offensive: An invading army launches an attack on a capital city.
- Watching Troy Burn: Watching the destruction of your beloved home city or a similar place.
- Welcome to the Big City: Someone from a small country town gets introduced to the metropolitan life.
- Wretched Hive: A Crapsack World in the form of a city or town. Corruption, crime, and poverty are a major element of life here.
- Caught in the Bad Part of Town: Someone finds themselves stuck in a part of the city with a high crime rate (and they're not from that area).
- Gangster Land: A city ruled by various ruthless criminal groups fighting each other for money and power.
- Inner City School: Schools in poor urban neighborhoods, often offering very low-quality education.
- Outlaw Town: A city inhabited (and ruled by) all sorts of thieving criminals.
- Urban Hellscape: This neighborhood is just as ugly and miserable as it looks to be.
- Vice City: An entire city full of crime and corruption from top to bottom.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: The impoverished ghetto, shantytown, or slum neighborhoods of the city.
Specific Cities
- Major World Cities: A list of notable cities from the real world, including many which aren't listed on this page.
- Athens and Sparta: When two cities, so different in constitution and character, are at war with each other (spoilers: the militaristic polis will win, but the artistic polis will eventually rise in the end).
- Freestate Amsterdam
- London: The capital and largest city of the United Kingdom.
- Britain Is Only London: Works set in Britain will have the characters only travel in London (as opposed to the rest of country).
- Victorian London: London in Victorian times (1837 to 1901).
- Los Angeles: The second most populous city in the United States, and the largest in the state of California.
- Down L.A. Drain: A Chase Scene in Los Angeles' storm drain system.
- Hellish L.A.: Los Angeles depicted as a Wretched Hive.
- It Came from Beverly Hills
- The Show Goes Hollywood: Traveling to Hollywood or Los Angeles in general, particularly where all those big entertainment companies are based.
- Valley Girl: The San Fernando Valley is the origin of this stereotype.
- New York City: The most populous city in the United States, situated on the coast of New York State.
- Big Applesauce: New York is a City of Adventure where all kinds of interesting or unusual things happen.
- The Big Rotten Apple: NYC is depicted as being a Wretched Hive full of poverty, crime, and corruption. A very common portrayal in works from the 1970s to 1990s.
- Brooklyn Rage
- New York Is Only Manhattan: Manhattan is the most well-known of NYC's five boroughs outside of NYC, so it gets the most attention in fiction.
- Only in Miami: Works set in Florida are overwhelmingly centered in and around Miami, its second-largest (but most well-known) city.
- Paris: The capital and largest city of France.
- Eiffel Tower Effect: Major cities are often identified by their most famous landmarks; for example, the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
- Gay Paree: The city of Paris often gets very romanticized portrayals in media.
- Space BrasÃlia
- Tokyo: The capital and largest city of Japan, centered at the heart of one of the most populous metro areas in the world.
- Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
- The Tokyo Fireball: A city (like Tokyo) is destroyed but then rebuilds itself. Rinse and repeat.
- Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe
- Tokyo Tower
- Viva Las Vegas!: The characters go on a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada to engage in some vice-ridden fun.
