| The "city" in your postal address is simply the city of your closest post office, the one that delivers your mail. Municipal boundaries don't matter at all to USPS because that's simply not how they deliver mail. I've lived in three different addresses in three different cities in New York whose mailing address city was a different city than where that place was located. There exists entire towns that don't have any mailing addresses. To answer your questions: you don't really tell government forms when you live, you tell them your address. If anyone (government or not) asked where I lived I'd tell them the city where my house was located, not it's mailing address. But your mailing address could also be a "valid" response, because it's got that mailing address. It's just not at all a big deal and "close enough" is not a problem, honestly, because people don't often know exact political boundaries. >And how does one figure out what city they officially live in then? A map, property records, memos from town/city, nearby signage, looking at who's provides your municipal services (garbage, police..), looking who's sending you your property tax bill, maybe your state's website, or just call the closest town/city hall and ask (they can at the very least tell you if your address is or is not in their political jurisdiction) |