The final answer is there is no final answer. The City has its own Neighborhood Map, which is intended to be a practical guide to planners and community groups. It recognizes University City, because duh, it exists now. Thus it pushes away from UC terms like "West Philly" and "Southwest Philly", so they can be used to distinguish other tracts of land. There's no law that says folks have to pay attention to this map if it honks them off.
And it completely ignores the nesting phenomenon, which is very real in social geography. We live in hierarchies of neighborhoods, which we deploy variously according to the context of discussion. For instance: I live in West Philadelphia, in University City, in Spruce Hill. Which placename I use depends on whom I'm talking to and what I'm talking about. No law says I have to be consistent. No law says lower-level neighborhoods can't overlap higher-level boundaries. About West vs. Southwest, my best guess is the latter term emerged with clarity only after Philadelphia grew beyond Blockley Township, whose western border was Mill Creek up as far as Baltimore Pk. Beyond Mill Creek lay Kingsessing Township, which ran all the way to Darby Creek. "Kingsessing" is still used as a neighborhood name today (it is recorded in the Swedish period, ca. 1650, and reflects a Lenape designation for the land at and above Darby Creek along the Schuylkill or "Manayunk" River). Originally, "West Philadelphia" was a name for the mid-19th-c. urbanization of Blockley Twp., out as far as Maylandville on Mill Creek (roughly 43rd St. today). So Woodlands lay in West Philly. But Clark-Park-to-be was the boundary of West Philly. As urbanization proceeded, "West Philly" expanded westward along Market St. and Lancaster Ave. But the expansion into Kingsessing Twp. along Darby Pk. (Woodland Ave.) was felt to be a different neighborhood, which came to be called "Southwest Philly". University City contains territory that historically belongs to both West and Southwest Philadelphia. -- Tony West Ross wrote: Actually, I've been worrying about this Southwest/West Philly business for some time. What are the "actual" boundaries, and according to whom? You seem to imply that SOBA is Southwest Philly -- if the 34 trolley line really does bifurcate the two. Does that mean that Woodland Cemetery and Clark Park are actually in SW? Seems counterintuitive, dude. Got maps?
