City of Adventure



""The City... of Townsville!""

- Narrator, The Powerpuff Girls

""Hun, we have a major metropolitan area at our disposal here!""

- Paige Michalchuk, Degrassi

No need for Adventure Towns; all the excitement, glamour, outlandishness, and romance you could ever hope for just happens to be right in your own city. Unlike Tokyo and New York, this city is usually fictional.

The place to go to get easy Hero Insurance, judging by the massive collateral damage they can sustain.

Taken to the logical extreme, you get Building of Adventure or Academy of Adventure.

There may be a Magnetic Plot Device hidden somewhere around here. Try to find one.

If regulars in the City of Adventure get annoyed with all the supernatural goings-on, then that's City of Weirdos.

See also Geographic Flexibility, New Neighbours as the Plot Demands, and Aliens in Cardiff. Contrast Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here. Best served with a heaping of Land of One City or Capital City. May sometimes be accompanied by Where the Hell Is Springfield?.

The City is bound to be this.

Advertising

 * Parodied/Lampshaded in an ad for Degree Deodorant.

Anime and Manga

 * Academy City in A Certain Magical Index. The city is famous for grooming powerful power users, but it also has a dark side. The "questionable" research that's done at the city leads to many story arcs in the anime, and is enough to for a complete spin off: A Certain Scientific Railgun. They're under international law, which apparently explains why this is considered "legal" there. The city is also far ahead of the outside world in terms of technology, and they have to use this to their advantage in order to make sure more unruly (and powerful) Espers don't go on a Rampage. This may also fall under Academy of Adventure as Academy City is made up of dozens of different schools.
 * The beach town in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, although it's because the protagonists live there that things keep happening.
 * The importance of Karakura Town, a fictional district of Tokyo, to various spiritual entities in the anime Bleach is explained by an area of "high spiritual density" (a phenomenon which occurs more or less randomly across the world) coinciding with an area of high population. A notably high population of former Shinigami and other spiritually-attuned beings doesn't hurt, either.
 * Seireitei in Soul Society might count as well.
 * Kamakura, a small beachside town some 50km away from Tokyo, forms the setting for a few series:
 * Most of the weirdness in Elfen Lied takes place there;
 * The main characters from Uta Kata spend a lot of time at its beaches, only leaving the town for one Class Trip to Hakone;
 * The town's shrines, temples and local railway form the perfect backdrop for the drama in Aoi Hana;
 * Asumi from Twin Spica grows up at Kamakura's Yuigahama Beach, after surviving the space rocket crash there in which her mother got killed.
 * Uminari City in the first two seasons of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. This trait was passed to Mid-Childa when the heroes officially joined The Federation, but then again, it is the Capital World of The Multiverse.
 * The City from Blame is the epitome of this trope.
 * Kiki's Delivery Service takes place in a really beautiful port city, which provides an appropriate amount of adventure for pre-teens. It's a case of pleasant Dieselpunk.
 * Daten City of Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt.
 * Ikebukuro in Durarara!!. Something is always happening whether it's a gang war, Slashers, or vending machines flying through the air.
 * Fukuoka City in Excel Saga, thanks to the machinations of two silly warring entities.
 * Death City, NV, of Soul Eater is not only the place where the Shibusen (or DWMA, if you're watching the dub) is located, it also holds the significance of being the place where Asura was trapped and, as such, is a commonly targeted place by whoever wants to set him free . And while the students and their weapon partners have to travel around the world for their field assignments, holding the fort is also of utmost importance.

Comic Books

 * It is extremely common in solo Superhero series for the hero to have a specific city that they are known to patrol as "their territory":
 * Gotham City (Batman)
 * Metropolis (Superman)
 * Metropolis is considered to be the single most adventure-riddled city in the DCU, even compared to all the other cities of adventure.
 * Central City/Keystone City (The Flash)
 * Opal City (Starman)
 * Fawcett City/Fairfield (Captain Marvel)
 * Ivy Town (The Atom)
 * Blüdhaven (Nightwing)
 * Coast City (Hal Jordan's Green Lantern)
 * Gateway City (Mr. Terrific / The Spectre / Wonder Woman for a time)
 * Boston (Wonder Woman)
 * ...or Washington DC at other times.
 * Hub City (The Question)
 * Midway City/St. Roch (Hawkman / Doom Patrol)
 * Sub Diego (Aquaman / Aquagirl)
 * Star City/Seattle (Green Arrow)
 * The Teen Titans' Titans Tower is generally accepted to be in the San Francisco Bay.
 * Earlier on, it was on an island in New York's East River
 * Middleton/Denver (Martian Manhunter)
 * Park City/Seattle (Black Canary)
 * El Paso (Jaime Reyes's Blue Beetle)
 * Chicago (Ted Kord's Blue Beetle)
 * Smallville (a *Town* of Adventure) (Pre Crisis Superboy)
 * New York City (Iron Man / Fantastic Four / The Avengers / Spider-Man... specifically the fictional Empire State University)
 * Salem Center, Westchester County, just north of NYC (Home of the X-Men's Mansion). They have since relocated to San Francisco, and now reside in Utopia, a rock floating on the ocean just off the US Pacific Coast.
 * Hell's Kitchen, NYC (Daredevil)
 * Damn, let's just put "New York" (in a more general/historical sense) for 9 out of 10 Marvel characters and leave it at that, okay?
 * Dakota (the city, not the state) - Static, Icon, Hardware, Blood Syndicate and other Dakotaverse characters.
 * Citrusville, FL (Man-Thing)
 * Parodied in The Tick (animation) with "The City".
 * Used straight in Runaways with Los Angeles, with a justification: after the kids  But also deconstructed somewhat with regards to New York City, the City of Adventure for the rest of the Marvel Universe - superpowers are seen as something that mostly happens far away from our heroes; then they visit NYC and are awed at seeing superheroes in the streets, and one character comments "here, we're not so special".
 * For some reason, Washington, D.C. was not this for Captain America (comics).
 * It is this, however, for Hawk And Dove.
 * Judge Dredd's Mega-City-One from the British comic 2000AD. Which makes sense since it takes up the entire East Coast.
 * Neopolis, the Science Hero ghetto that the police of Top Ten patrol.
 * Kurt Busiek's Astro City; much of the plot hinges on subverting and lampshadehanging this very trope.
 * The City in Transmetropolitan, home to Spider Jerusalem and every vice there is.
 * Bugtown, in Matt Howarth's various comics, including Those Annoying Post Brothers and Savage Henry. Notable for being infinite in size, and having such screwed-up laws of physics that entropy works in reverse—dead people inevitably come back to life after some time.
 * Chicago from Savage Dragon. Also, later in the series, there's God City.
 * Cynosure from Grimjack. Perhaps justified since it was built at the center of the multiverse.
 * Snap City in Madman.
 * New York City in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise.

Film

 * Champion City in the film Mystery Men.
 * Casablanca qualifies as a Trope Codifier.

Live Action TV

 * The town of Smallville in Smallville. The explanation for the large number of unusual occurrences is the presence of a significant amount of Kryptonite in the area, which in this case causes humans in its presence to gain powers varying from individual to individual.
 * Eerie, Indiana, Eerie, Indiana, Eerie, Indiana...
 * Eerie, Indiana
 * Monk's San Francisco
 * And Charmed's San Francisco, though sometimes for no reason whatsoever.
 * CSI's Las Vegas
 * And obviously CSI: NY New York and CSI: Miami's Miami.
 * Played with in one episode when a Vegas-based rapper claimed it was "the new New York". A certain New York rapper took offense, and a "beef" started.
 * Forever Knight's Toronto, with a serial killer for every day of the year.
 * Same with Blood Ties, with monsters taking place of serial killers.
 * Cabot Cove in Murder, She Wrote. They do get Jessica out and about regularly, but there are still an awful lot of murders in her small hometown—it's a wonder there's anyone left. After Sheriff Tupper left, his replacement in Cabot Cove (an ex-New Yorker) lampshaded this.
 * Despite all the Adventure Towns the Doctor often visits, aliens in Doctor Who like to invade 20th and 21st century Earth from the Home Counties, usually London.
 * The inhabitants of present-day London eventually turn Genre Savvy about this, and start evacuating the city at Christmas time, as two consecutive Doctor Who Christmas Specials bring Alien Invaders to it.
 * In Torchwood, Cardiff is located on an inter-dimensional rift, which results in plenty of weird things ending up there.
 * The town of Sunnydale in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, being set upon a "Hellmouth", is very much a town of this sort. The Hellmouth is described as a portal which leaks mystical energy, both drawing demons towards it and affecting things in supernatural ways: e.g., a girl becomes invisible because she feels invisible, and later we see various kinds of Mad Science that might not work elsewhere. Thus, there is an automatic answer for so many supernatural things all occurring in this one town. The town transformed at need so that in one episode it was small enough to be taken over by a dozen bikers and in others it became a major University town with international sea and air hubs. At the end of Season 3, Xander jokes about this, asking "Why do people still move here?" Turns out
 * Los Angeles from Angel is a more conventional example. Demons [ like living in the same town as the Occult Law Firm - and Doyle or Cordelia's visions served to explain why Angel usually dealt with them.
 * In 24, Genre Blind terrorists always make a point of attacking Los Angeles, despite the fact that it is the one city in America that has the indestructible Jack Bauer in it.
 * In the seventh season, they finally wise up and attack Washington, D.C. But their timing really sucks...
 * And again in the eighth season, when they attack New York on the day Jack plans to leave for L.A.
 * Power Rangers usually follows this trope, with the occasional side trip. To date: Angel Grove, Terra Venture, Mariner Bay, Silver Hills, Turtle Cove, Blue Bay Harbor, Reefside, Newtech City, Briarwood, Ocean Bluff, Corinth, and Panorama City. Subverted in Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, where the characters are based in San Angeles, but travel all over the world. Justified in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, as Terra Venture is actually a traveling space colony and there's nothing outside the city but the empty expanse of space (but Mike could still breathe out there, so...).
 * Also justified in Power Rangers RPM, where Corinth is the only city left on earth, the rest of the planet being a bombed-out wasteland.
 * Super Sentai and Kamen Rider work on the same principle, but the events of both series apparently happen in the exact same (unnamed) city every single year. An avid fan will quickly be able to spot reused locations, and come to pity the people who live there.
 * This city could as well be Tokyo, given the appearances of the Tokyo Dome (which actually sponsors some of the tokusatsu series by Toei) in some of them, among a few other hints.
 * Except for the one time where it was specifically named Futo which was just Tokyo with a bunch of windmills added everywhere. The TV Asahi building (the channel that airs the shows) was reappropriated as the TV Futo building.
 * The city of Cascade in The Sentinel. Ebola virus threats? Uranium smuggling? Yakuza gang wars? Paramilitary terrorists taking whole buildings hostage? Just another day in Cascade.
 * "Seacouver" in Highlander the Series.
 * Lampshaded in the In the Heat of the Night TV series, set in the fictional Missisippi town of Sparta. "I should join the Marines...I'd see less dead bodies."
 * In Big Wolf on Campus, Pleasantville is beset by an astonishing number of bizarre supernatural occurrences; a few of them are connected to the heroes, but mainly it's just a place where weird things happen.
 * Babylon 5 justifies this trope by having the station be a crossroads for many different space-faring races.
 * Averted in Lie to Me, as Washington DC is just too small.
 * Wherever Pushing Daisies takes place seems to attract really, really odd murders.
 * Ryukendo's city of Akebono is a hot spot for the Power Spot located conveniently beneath the city.
 * Miami, Florida seems to have an awful lot of violent criminals, con men, and, well, spies. And commandos. And drug dealers. And high end top secret government contractors.
 * And a rather alarmingly high number of active serial killers.
 * Star Trek: Deep Space Nine the titular Deep Space Nine space station above the independent planet of Bajor acts as this espeically as the nearby  provides a Plot Magnet to attract others to a space station.

Literature

 * St Mary Mead, where Agatha Christie's little old lady/amateur detective Miss Marple lives. Given her advanced age, the events described in the books starring her must take place over the space of a few years, so it seems that mysterious murders occur in her village with alarming frequency.
 * Trantor in several Isaac Asimov stories, which is in fact a city covering the entire surface of a planet. (Timothy Zahn would later adapt this idea to the planet Coruscant in the Star Wars Expanded Universe; it would later appear in the prequels.) A 47th century New York City is used to the same effect in his novel The Caves of Steel. Such a world city is known as an Ecumenopolis.
 * River Heights and Bayport in the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books. Fridge Logic makes their high crime rates plausible; they were created in the 20's, and were suburbs of Chicago and New York, respectively, so it could be assumed that there's a large influence from the mafia.
 * Popular in fantasy settings. Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar from his Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser stories is probably the archetype, but its parody Ankh-Morpork from the Discworld novels is now much better known.
 * One of Leiber's short stories specifically links Lankhmar with its historical inspiration, Alexandria.
 * Hogboro in several stories by Daniel Pinkwater. In Alan Mendelssohn, Boy from Mars, Alan and Leonard remark on their luck finding that one of the dozen places in the world listed as suitable for interplanar contact is right in Hogboro (though tracking down the exact spot proves troublesome). The next closest spot on the list is in Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories, Canada.
 * Chicago in The Dresden Files. Justified being due to a confluence of magical leylines in the area and the fact that Chicago is a travel hub in the real world so that draws at least some members of the magical community through there as well. In addition, by later books it's clear that a lot of the action is going on in Chicago because that's where Harry himself happens to live.
 * In addition, averted in the seventh book when it becomes apparent that there are some really important things going on elsewhere that Harry and the reader don't find out about until later.
 * The fictional English town of Blackbury in Terry Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell Trilogy. It's also the location of The Store in the Nomes Trilogy.
 * The Sprawl, in William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy. Officially known as Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis (BAMA), it is essentially one huge megapolis covering most of the east coast of the USA.
 * Larry Niven did something similar to California shortly before putting Earth on a bus in Ringworld.
 * Thousands of British juvenile adventure novels were published by the pulp presses, and an overwhelming number - somewhere in the hundreds - were set in Calgary. This troper suspects the writers wanted to show exciting things like cowboys and Indians, ranches, mountain climbers, and hunting (popular subjects of American juvenile literature) but in an Empire setting, and Calgary fit the bill. Many of these books were also translated into German; this troper knew an elderly man who immigrated to Canada specifically because as a child he'd immured himself in these novels and thought Calgary was Tombstone with Union Jacks.
 * The titular city “at the center of time” in Edward Bryant's Cinnabar
 * Faction Paradox has what is possibly the largest one of this ever commited to literature, barring none: the City of the Saved, a galaxy-sized, sentient ecumenopolis situated at the edge of time itself, before the point of collapse of the current Universe and the beginning of the next. Every human to ever live, every hybrid in between, and most fictional characters ever to exist. Consists of What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs? and a double serving of Crazy Awesome...
 * And the much darker Eleven-Day Empire. Having your entire history rewritten in a whim counts as an adventure, right?
 * True, it's not strictly a city. But the mythical "Bear Country" where the main characters live in the Berenstain Bears series of picture books by Jan and Stan Berenstain almost certainly qualifies, as it is ostensibly an isolated rural community but features many familiar trappings of urban and suburban life (such as a shopping mall) as well as more nostalgic and fanciful settings, like a dank swamp home to roving teenage hooligans and a woman suspected of being a witch. And Bear Country never gets boring for Brother and Sister (although, to be sure, when you're a child and are just seeing many things for the first time, it's awfully hard to get bored).
 * Deepdene in the Dark Touch novels. The portal to hell in one house doesn't help. Either deamons are coming through it or get drawn to it.
 * The London depicted in Rivers of London fulfils this role whether it wants to or not.
 * This is kind of the main idea behind the Quentaris books and the one thing they have in common. (They're not even all by the same author.)
 * In the web-novel Domina the titular city is like this. Gangs of bio-augmented crazies rule the streets, hunting giant rats is a common way to make money, and.
 * Nightside the secret city within London.

Tabletop Games

 * Sigil of Planescape fame, being the foremost crossroads of the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse.
 * Also in D&D, certain cities in the various settings can wind up like this. Examples include:
 * Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep from Forgotten Realms. Waterdeep was significant enough to get its own sourcebook.
 * Neverwinter too, in 2011. Gloomwrought, Hestavar, and the City of Brass all have extensive write-ups as well.
 * Sharn from Eberron got Sharn, City of Towers.
 * TSR did an entire box set on the city of Huzuz for the Al-Qadim setting.
 * The Free City of Greyhawk in Greyhawk.
 * The Old World of Darkness prodeuced several guides to real world cities, with details of the nasties there.
 * The New World of Darkness tends towards one signature city per game line—New Orleans for Vampire, Denver for Werewolf, Boston for Mage, Detroit for Promethean, Miami for Changeling, Philadelphia for Hunter, and New York for Geist. There's also an independent book for Chicago that covers plot hooks for mortals, as well as lays out the politics of the local "big three" (vampires, werewolves, and mages).
 * The titular city of Mortasheen is a continent-sized version of this combined with the Industrial type of Mordor, filled with crazy mutants and monsters in a constant state of chaos.
 * The city of The Edge in the island nation of Al-Amarja is the setting for all the weirdness in Over the Edge.
 * Ravnica, of the Magic: The Gathering multi-verse, is not quite a straight example, as it's a city that covers its entire world.
 * In Monte Cook's Ptolus, a setting revolving entirely around the titular city (and, incidentally, one of the fattest roleplaying books ever published, at 672 pages).
 * The city is built around Sealed Evil in a Can and on top of multiple layers of Sealed Evil in a Can, and (mostly unrelatedly) is home to several men who are, or can at least get away with claiming to be, emperor. The evil is leaking, the cans have become something of a tourist industry, and the political tensions are on the rise. Yes, there are some explanations.
 * Warhammer Fantasy Battle has Mordheim, a warband setting that takes place in the titular City of Adventure and puts its own unique perspective on it. The city was levelled by a meteorite of Warpstone, a substance that has tremendous value for magical experiments and is a vital ingredient in the Philosopher's Stone- that is, an alchemical concoction that can change "base" metals into pure gold. So, naturally, the city is swarming with violent, opportunistic mercenaries and treasure hunters. Of course, Warpstone is also Toxic Phlebotinum, or perhaps Psycho Serum would be a better descriptor, as it causes physical, mental and spiritual corruption. So, naturally, the city is also teeming with all manner of horrific monsters...
 * In the Champions Universe, Millennium City gets far more superhuman action than you would expect for Detroit Redux. Partly justified due to its The City Of The Future meme.
 * Similar to the Warhammer Fantasy Battle example above, Warhammer 40,000 has Necromunda, its equivalent of Mordheim. Taking place on the Hive World of the same name, it's justified in that, like all Hive Worlds, the actual planet has been polluted so terribly by eons of industrial production that humans now live in tremendous ant-hive like buildings that serve as the new equivalent of continents.
 * Shadowrun's Seattle Metroplex.
 * Arkham in Arkham Horror. Home to a number of cults, the infamous Miskatonic University, and far too many eldritch secrets. Most of the expansions add to the madness and make Arkham home to things like a cursed museum exhibit or the only attempted performance of a Brown Note play. A few involve mysteries outside of Arkham and add Adventure Towns to the game.

Video Games

 * Paragon City, Rhode Island in City of Heroes.
 * And the Rogue Isles in City Of Villains.
 * Millennium City (again) in Champions Online.
 * Sigil of Planescape fame, being the foremost crossroads of the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse.
 * Mega Ten's Persona series has Mikage-cho in Persona, Sumaru City in Persona 2, Port Island in Persona 3 and Inaba in Persona 4.
 * Mega Ten in general seems to love this trope, mainly due to its Urban Fantasy stylings. In fact, many of the games take place in Tokyo (or what's left of it anyway). Games that don't take place in a city are the exception rather than the norm.
 * Roma in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.
 * Dungeons & Dragons Online in Stormreach.
 * The Grand Theft Auto series consistently gives us three of this kind of city since the first game: Liberty City (an Expy of New York City), San Andreas (an expy of California and Nevada), and Vice City (an expy of Miami). GTA 2 also gives us "Anywhere, USA", though it's almost forgotten''.
 * Befitting that its borrows a lot from Grand Theft Auto (as listed directly above), Crackdown takes place in "Pacific City", and seems to be either inspired by, or borrows the idea of a multi-island approach, for geography.
 * Urban Chaos takes place in Union City.
 * South Town is a focal point for events in the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting series, and also gets a mention in the King of Fighters series. Appears to be quite a multicultural place, possibily justifying how so many people there master several martial arts from around the world.
 * The first two Etrian Odyssey games are set in a City of Adventure built around a labyrinth or dungeon; the third features a port town as your base of operations.
 * Reality-On-The-Norm from the eponymous series.
 * The city of Kirkwall in Dragon Age II.
 * The town of Fuyuki in both Fate/stay night and Fate/hollow ataraxia
 * In Academagia, Mineta is one of the largest and most important cities in Elumia; as well as the home to "The Academy of Magic of Mineta", more commonly called "Academagia". The game includes many potential events and adventures set in and around Mineta.
 * Stilwater in Saints Row happens to be a city full of opportunities and if Stilwater didn't had enough opportunities alone, the new bigger city of Steelport is gonna have a lot more than that of Stilwater.
 * Clint City in Urban Rivals most certainly qualifies. It has gangs, vampires, aliens, robots, pirates...

Web Comics
"Carol: Ed, I grew up in Moperville. Weird stuff happens here..."
 * Gunnerkrigg Court's eponymous boarding school.
 * Templar, Arizona the comic is about this kind of city.
 * The city of Cwcville in the infamous Sonichu attempts to be follow this trope within the comic's pages, though the author's canonical descriptions of the laws and government in the city outside the comics have made it sound more like a fascist 1984-like Dystopia.
 * Last Res0rt has its reality show in its very own space station built expressly for this purpose; it houses the show, the arena, and everything else you need for a world-class tourist resort to house and host all the spectators coming to watch.
 * And in fact, there IS a named city built into the space station, known as the City of... Wonder. Since we're talking about a city manufactured into the space station, it's not that surprising of a name.
 * The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob has the "pleasantly innocuous hamlet" of Generictown, which has become a City of Adventure purely because Bob the Weirdness Magnet lives there. Presumably, it would quiet down again if he moved, but he shows no signs of doing so.
 * Whatever unnamed city the Sluggy Freelance crew lives in seems to have an unusually large number of vampires, talking animals, mad scientists, zombies, ghosts, FBI agents, and demonic possessions, not to mention some really weird stuff.
 * El Goonish Shive events take place mostly in Moperville. With all the Humanoid Aliens, Half-Human Hybrid, Shapeshifting, Functional Magic and Mad Science. When news reporter wanted to investigate a story of "evil monkey" rampaging in public school, her boss thought such things are more fitting for a tabloid. Her responce?


 * Tackleford from Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery
 * The Ruhr Area from Union of Heroes consists of more than one city so "Cities of Adventure" is more to the point here.
 * Electric Wonderland has Nettropolis, a city evolved from the Internet and populated by digital avatars.
 * Megatokyo. Among other things, Magical Girls and Ninja exist, zombies invade on a semi-frequent basis, video game companies like Sony and Sega are in league with Satan and employ psychotic mercenaries to enforce their edicts, the Tokyo police department ride around in Humongous Mecha, and Kaiju insurance is a bitch to get.

Web Animation

 * Picture on top: CCC City, the 'City of Opportunities' in the popular flash video series, in which literally every day in and around the city (so large it renders maps pointless) involves countless adventures of many different levels.

Web Original

 * Metro City, the titular city of the Metro City Chronicles
 * The Town
 * Dunwich, New Hampshire, only a couple miles from Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe.
 * Also, Boston and New York City. Whenever one of the characters goes to either place, something happens.
 * And Los Angeles, since that's where Phase now lives when she's not at school.
 * Mayfield in The Descendants. It's somewhere in Virginia.
 * Inside the city itself, a healthy amount of the action takes place in or around Westinghall Plaza.
 * Welcome to Denfair City, New Jersey. Home of The Impossible Man.
 * The Transformers fan club fiction has Axiom Nexus.
 * Grand Lake City, in "Legion of Nothing", seems to count.
 * Questport is a village, rather than a city, but has enough adventure and oddness for a city a dozen times its size.

Western Animation
"Reporter: And so just weeks after the devastating attack of mutant genetic creatures, zombies and Thanksgiving turkeys, the town of South Park has managed to rebuilt itself once again (sees giant robotic Barbra Streisand destroying the town) oh, God damn it, not again!"
 * The TV series Teen Titans has the Titans Tower in "Jump City", at least according to the comic adaptation Teen Titans Go; the team's hometown was never named in the cartoon. Meanwhile, "Steel City" is the location of Titans East.
 * The City... of Townsville in The Powerpuff Girls.
 * And the Town... of Citysville
 * Perhaps surprisingly, the name isn't fictional; there is a city named Townsville in Queensland, Australia.
 * St. Canard in Darkwing Duck.
 * In DuckTales (1987) and the comics it's based on, many of Uncle Scrooge's adventures take place "here in...Duckburg!"
 * Heatherfield in W.I.T.C.H. (it's where all the portals are, and it's where all the Guardians live.)
 * The Middle of Nowhere in Courage the Cowardly Dog seems to be some sort of nexus for "creepy stuff", to the point where it takes obvious danger to get anyone but Courage to take notice. Talking animals, aliens, deities, and supernatural entities (not to mention Courage's own sapience and abilities) are all treated as normal until the big pointy teeth come out.
 * Springfield in The Simpsons is a deliberate parody of this. At one point Our Favorite Family suddenly notices that they live across the street from an expensive mansion that wasn't there before and was created for that episode so that George Bush could move in.
 * Capital City is one of these in some early episodes. In "Dancin' Homer", it's even given its own theme song (sung by Tony Bennett, no less) which overtly invokes the trope in its lyrics.
 * Subverted in which the family travels abroad on occasion, and being them the Simpsons, wherever they go, hijinks follow.
 * Danny Phantom has Amity Park, a town with ghost/occult-related names for obvious reasons.
 * Megakat City, of Swat Kats.
 * Porkbelly in Johnny Test.
 * Cape Suzette in Tale Spin.
 * Single Town in Monster Buster Club.
 * The Life and Times of Juniper Lee is set entirely in Orchid Bay, an Fictional Counterpart of San Francisco. This is a Justified Trope because Juniper is magically prevented from leaving the city as long as she's the Te Xuan Ze.
 * Earthworm Jim's town of Terlawk. Lampshaded in "Upholstered Peril".
 * Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers: The unnamed yet strangely familiar hometown of the Rescue Rangers.
 * The "city-planet" of Acmetropolis in Loonatics Unleashed.
 * Detroit in Transformers Animated, which seems to have had a reasonable population of supervillains even before the Transformers came along. Some of it can be explained by being the centerpoint of the robotic revolution created by Isaac Sumdac.
 * In Disney's Aladdin movie, Agrabah was a fairly normal Middle Eastern city (with a vizier problem). In the series it became a full-on City of Adventure, with Evil Sorcerers, Sekhmet ripoffs, and giant flying snakes attacking seemingly every week.
 * Lampshaded in one episode where Aladdin is running from a giant floating eyeball and Iago tries to explain to him that he's only dreaming by pointing out how absurd their situation is. Aladdin merely shrugs and says, "Stranger things have happened."
 * Rollbots: Flip City provides adventure for all its citizens simply because the roads are all autobahns designed by an extreme sport enthusiast for robots that turn into high-speed spheres.
 * Do not forget South Park! It can all be summed up in one quote...


 * Acme Acres in Tiny Toon Adventures felt like this (when the Toonsters weren't traveling around the world and beyond). Having Wackyland next door to Acme Acres certainly helps.
 * Miseryville on Jimmy Two Shoes. But what do you expect from a town that's practically in Hell?
 * Danville in Phineas and Ferb. Besides the titular characters' physics-defying daily projects, theres a city wide originization of animal secret agents who go undercover as pets, a league of evil scientists and girl scouts who get patches for wrestling alligators.
 * Middleton, home of Kim Possible.
 * New New York, in Futurama.
 * Stormalong Harbor in The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack
 * Republic City in The Legend of Korra.
 * The Bay Area in Robotboy. More specifically in San Francisco, from the looks of it, but only the term "Bay Area" is ever used.
 * Quahog, RI, in Family Guy.
 * Langley Falls, VA, in American Dad.
 * The poor city of Retroville in Jimmy Neutron goes through a lot of stuff such as a giant plant-teachers, deadly nanobots, giant roaming toys, impending meteors, alien abductions, city-wide hypnosis, the population gets shrunk, pants attack, alien invasions (at least thrice), sentient fast food restaurants, temporary super heroes, super villains, megalomaniac dictators... all caused by Jimmy of course.