Cincinnati from cincinnativiews.net

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When we were deciding where to live, we did not select a location based on defined boundaries (although I've heard that school districts are common reasons for doing so.)
We looked for the place that had the best urban habitat. We needed to be able to walk to shopping and dining, get to work quickly, have a reasonable choice for groceries, and be part of a community. This civic nature really appealed to us. There are a select few places in the metro region outside of Cincinnati that can provide that, but not with the same intentions. The CITY is the place that allows all of the suburban and exurban areas the infrastructure to exist, and I wanted to be a part of that.

As Christopher Leinberger says, we need a distinction between walkable urban communities and drivable suburban ones, and American city limits are useless for understanding that distinction. The defined City Limits are an imperfect approximation of what the "city" really is, and what it means to live in the city.