What do you think something has to have to be Urban Fantasy?

[Qualapec]

I'm just curious, what do you all think are the things that something has to touch on to be urban fantasy?

[Suilan]

Ingredient 1: a modern city. Modern as in: industrial age. Technology rules. The city is filled with normal people living normal lives.

Ingredient 2: something supernatural lives in the city, usually unbeknownst by the majority of the people.

Everything else is optional.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Ingredient 1: a modern city. Modern as in: industrial age. Technology rules. The city is filled with normal people living normal lives.
Ingredient 2: something supernatural lives in the city, usually unbeknownst by the majority of the people.

I disagree on the first count, definitely.

Walter Jon Williams' Metropolitan and City on Fire are set in a planet-covering city behind a mysterious Shield where magic arises naturally from the arrangements of buildings, in a feng shui sort of way, and is tapped and provided as a utility like electricity.  I think of that as urban fantasy, as being probably as urban as it's possible for fantasy to get, but it's not remotely modern, and the lives of the normal people there are not normal by our standards. 

Also, arguably, Perdido Street Station. Fantasy world of a sort, but very very urban, and it includes steampunky robots and demons and peculiar Lovecraft-like aliens with wild abandon.

[DragonFire]

I disagree on the first count, definitely.

Walter Jon Williams' Metropolitan and City on Fire are set in a planet-covering city behind a mysterious Shield where magic arises naturally from the arrangements of buildings, in a feng shui sort of way, and is tapped and provided as a utility like electricity.  I think of that as urban fantasy, as being probably as urban as it's possible for fantasy to get, but it's not remotely modern, and the lives of the normal people there are not normal by our standards. 

I'd actually call that Sci-fi, rather than Urban Fantasy.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I'd actually call that Sci-fi, rather than Urban Fantasy.

Of arguments of definition of that particular line, there is no end.  I think of these books as fantasy because a) it's clearly magic, not some advanced science being treated as magic, and b) the author talks about them as fantasy.

[Suilan]

I believe Qualapec didn't ask for any sort of genre definition but what each of us thinks of as necessary ingredients to an Urban fantasy setting.

[DragonFire]

Of arguments of definition of that particular line, there is no end.  I think of these books as fantasy because a) it's clearly magic, not some advanced science being treated as magic, and b) the author talks about them as fantasy.

DUde, this is one of those things where we have different opinions.
I havent' read the material in question, but from your description, it sounds like magic is scientifically approached, from a high tech sophisticated society. I consider that sci fi.
Please note, it's just my opinion.

[fivestyle]

Take a helping of Fiction and add a dash of fantasy/supernatural and viola

[RMatthewWare]

You might as well ask the difference between scifi and fantasy.  You're going to get many different answers.

To boil it down to basics, Urban Fantasy has an urban and a fantasy element in it.

In my opinion, it's any kind of fantasy in a modern setting.

[Fineous]

Yeah, I think the presence of technology is essential.  Without it, you have a classic fantasy set in a city.  The Hawk and Fisher books by Simon Green, and Cook's series about the private investigator that I can't currently think of the name of.  They are gritty storis set in an urban setting, but they are not really urban fantasy.

It does not have to be modern day tech, however.  Lillity Saintcrow's Dante Valentine series is an Urban fantasy set in the future.

Just my 2 bits worth.