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human
[DC] Where do fictional cities like Gotham, Metropolis, Central City, Star City etc exist in the DC universe if there are also real cities?

As far as I know, real places like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington DC exists in the DC Universe. So where do all these fictional cities fit in with the real cities?
gpt
* **Metropolis**: is located in Delaware, but functionally it fills the same role as New York City (complete with UN building). In real life Delaware really doesn't have any cities that big.
* **Happy Harbor** is in Rhode Island, and is home to the JLA's first Secret Sanctuary. It's located in a giant mountain which must be the only one in the state (good hiding job there). 
* **Gotham City**: is located in New Jersey (some sources suggest that in this world, New Jersey is actually CALLED Gotham state). Still heavily based on New York (the seedier aspects), and given its proximity to Metropolis, the two must be in the same metropolitan area, though they're never really stated to be as such.
* **Bludhaven** is presumably equivalent to Buffalo to Gotham's New York
* **Central City**: despite some zigzagging, it's pretty firmly nailed down in Missouri and is apparently most like Kansas City with possibly a dash of St. Louis (in Young Justice they've even got their own Gateway Arch)
* **Midway City** seems to be Chicago or Detroit, and is in Michigan (Detroit actually exists and is the home of Cyborg and Firestorm, so... take that as you will).
* **Hub City**, **Illinois** is sort of based on the worst of the Rust Belt; it's considered one of those cities even worse than Gotham. Come to that, so is Static's home of **Dakota City**.
* **Opal City** seems to be Baltimore, or at least it's in Maryland and has the sort of gothique atmosphere... but it also has Old West history (which Maryland obviously does not)
* **Civic City** might be Philadelphia, at least it's in Pennsylvania
* **St. Roch** is quite obviously New Orleans, Louisiana. In fact, there's even a St. Roch neighborhood in IRL New Orleans.
* **Freeland** is usually in Metropolis but in the Black Lightning show it's pretty obviously Atlanta, Georgia.
* **Coast City** seems to be based mostly on San Francisco and is located in roughly the same place.
* **Star City**, according to modern writers, is apparently straight-up Seattle.