My city is not available to choose from.

[Vitaliy S]

When creating my Upwork profile, I am asked to put in my home address. Somehow, the system does not recognize "Brooklyn" (in NY) as a valid city. It inputs "Kings County" instead, which is not a city.

See attached screenshot.

[Joanne Marie P]

Hi Vitaliy,

We checked and Brooklyn is in the jurisdiction of King's County.

[Vitaliy S]

Hello Joanne and thank you for your reply.

Kings County is just that, a county. Inside this county is the city of Brooklyn. For any postal address inside Brooklyn, the address reads "Brooklyn, NY". For any other online form where you fill out your address and it gives suggestions, the city is always Brooklyn.

I admit NYC's borough system can be confusing sometimes, but I've lived there for over 25 years. I've only heard the name "Kings County" mentioned maybe a handful of times while living there. The city is called Brooklyn, in the county of Kings County, in the state of New York.

[Valeria K · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the feedback, Vitaliy, we'll share it with the team.

Meanwhile, feel free to use the address that shows in the drop down with Kings County as a city as it's synonymous with Brooklyn. When searching Kings County on Google Maps, it'll return Brooklyn.

[Vitaliy S]

Understood, Valeria. Thank you.

[Jeff S]

I am still having the same problem in August 2019. In the "Start typing an address" field for location it lists my address as Brooklyn, NY and then autofills the City field as Kings County. If I try to change it to Brooklyn — one of the largest urban areas in the United States — it won't let me.

Despite your assurances that it's the same thing, the problem is that this address will now be different from my legal address according to my bank and the federal and state government, which can cause a lot of problems.

[Avery O]

Hi Jeff, 

I checked, and if the address you are trying to enter is not accepted by the system, an option to add your address manually will appear just below the "Start typing an address." When you click on it, you should be able to edit all the address fields. Let me know if this isn't the case so that I can assist you further.

[Jeff S]

I followed all the steps. Here's what it looks like.

1. I enter my address (which I have blurred for privacy). Brooklyn is one of the options.

2. As you can see, when I select the Brooklyn option, it enters Kings County into the "City" field.

3. When I try to edit the City field and enter Brooklyn, NY, it's not an option.

4. It won't accept Brooklyn if I just move off the tab.

5. Or if I manage to save it, it replaces my city automatically.

You say that Brooklyn, NY, is not accepted by the system, but that's something you should fix, right? Brooklyn has to be one of the biggest freelancer markets in the entire country. I would think this easily fixed database issue should have been fixed years ago, which makes me think that the feedback on these forums is not making its way to the people who can fix what's broken.

[Tiffany S]

The thing is, while Brooklyn is a postal address, it isn't actually a city. The correct city would be New York City, but that would be misleading since it is historically used to describe Manhattan. Brooklyn hasn't actually been a separate city since the late 1800s. While most platforms use the commonly-used terminologies, one relying on technicalities (as might be common with an international system) wouldn't recognize Brooklyn as a city.

[Avery O]

Thanks for sharing this, Jeff. As Valeria has noted on this same thread, you can use the address that shows in the drop down with Kings County as a city as it's synonymous with Brooklyn. 

I'll go ahead and follow up on this escalation from last year so that it can be considered.