All Comments on 'What makes Urban fantasy?'

Hmm I kinda disagree. It would of course be a bonus if the city were a character, but to me Urban Fantasy is just about mashing Fantasy tropes likes vampires, dragons and magic with a setting that has some semblance of obeying the the rules of modern society.

It involves a lot of world-building in and of itself with regards to how much the author tries to "gel" fantasy with modern civilization with all its trappings and comforts. It's all about entertaining "what-if?" scenarios and taking them to their logical conclusion: THEN this happens.

What if vampires exist in modern society and we could mass-manufacture blood packs for them? THEN, presumably they could live openly in our society. There'd might be new diseases. There'd certainly be a lot of crime etc.

What if powerful dragons existed in our society and could disguise themselves as human? THEN they'd probably be the head of mega-corporations and try to amass wealth and power for themselves etc...

If the "city" has a character all its own, great. But that's not the defining feature of Urban Fantasy. In many ways I think Urban Fantasy has similarities to Sci-Fi in the amount of speculation that's possible.

Well, there is a difference between fantasy/science fiction and more realistic fiction. Although, I have read some science fiction, including futuristic stories, that have made good use of the settings. The novel that Soylent Green was based on had "world building" in the sense of of creating a dystopian future New York. (It was set in 1999; the movie in 2022.) It took the existing city (of 1966) and depicted it failing into ruins and chaos.

As or crime stories, the Noir series by Akashic Books has each volume set in a particular place and generally does an excellent job with most of it.

There is nothing wrong with knowing a place first-hand and using it for fiction. John Updike was at his best in Brewer, PA, based on his hometown of Reading. Faulkner almost always used his home state of Mississippi; Joyce was usually in Dublin or some other part of Ireland, I think. There are many other examples.