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I have noticed some cities, mostly very large cities, have certain classifications for areas of the cities, known as downtown, midtown, and uptown. Now, almost every town or city has a downtown. In my mind, downtown is usually the older part of the city, where many of the businesses or corporations chose to place their offices. Downtown is mostly commercial dominated, with some condos or apartments in the area, and little to no housing.
I think the term "downtown" came from Lower Manhattan. It is usually the main "financial district." I'm just going to assume the terms midtown and uptown came from Manhattan too. I don't exactly know how they are applied to other cities though. For example, uptown Minneapolis is actually south of downtown
In Manhattan they're both directions (except "midtown") and terms for parts of the island. Midtown Manhattan is the area between a street somewhere in the lower 30s (which one depends on who you ask) and the southern boundary of Central Park (59th street). Uptown is usually used as a direction but can refer to anything north of 59th street (although I think it's safe to say that Christie Brinkley didn't live in Harlem). Downtown Manhattan as a place is kind of vaguely defined, but it at least includes the Financial District.
Note that much of Midtown is also a business district, but nobody calls the business districts in other cities "midtowns".
I have seen the cities of Charlotte, Atlanta, and Chicago all have areas that are referred to as Uptown or Midtown. If they aren't New York, what are they trying to do by labeling areas as uptown and midtown?
Detroit has a secondary business district between Downtown and the suburb of Highland Park called New Center. It was created as an edge city when much of present-day Detroit was still rural and a new railroad line was built to circumvent the city. This is likely where 'Midtown' came into being and became an important neighborhood between Downtown and New Center. Midtown is where most of Detroit's cultural institutions are located including Wayne State University.
Uptown was never really a common description of any place in Detroit, but the area north of Highland Park is labeled, "Woodward Heights" on historical maps and is mostly residential. Some affluent suburbs north of Detroit have 'Uptown' in the business names but it's still not terribly common to call any specific area uptown.
I have seen the cities of Charlotte, Atlanta, and Chicago all have areas that are referred to as Uptown or Midtown. If they aren't New York, what are they trying to do by labeling areas as uptown and midtown?
Has nothing to do with New York. Charlotte's CBD/downtown is actually historically called Uptown, I forgot the story behind it.
In New Orleans downtown is from Canal St and everything downriver, for example, the French Quarter, Marigny, and 9th Ward. The CBD is not in downtown New Orleans. Uptown includes the CBD, Garden District, Carrolton, Central city, etc which is all upriver from Canal St. New Orleans has a Mid-City which straddles Canal St on the opposite side of Claiborne.
Baton Rouge's downtown is from the State Capital complex to I-10 and I-110. We have a Mid-City here as well which is an extension of downtown basically, it's highly residential. Downtown here has two of our oldest neighborhoods within it's borders.
Houston's midtown is highly commercial and retail, not nearly as residential as it should be.
Baltimore has a downtown and a midtown, but no uptown. Interestingly, suburbanites generally refer to the entire city as "downtown." This can get confusing.
Downtown: Of, in, or characteristic of the central area or main business and commercial area of a city or town: "downtown Chicago, New York, etc."
Uptown: Of, in, or characteristic of the residential area of a city or town.
Midtown: The central part of a city between the downtown and uptown areas
If this is accurate and true, it has been put in terms that I can make sense of. Thank you!
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