I hear you loud and clear: this is a geography project; it is neither a history project nor a government org chart. Never mind that a New Orleanian simply cannot discuss geography without talking your ear off about history.
Hypothetically, let’s say the critics of boundary mapping have a point – let’s ignore the classification system coming out of Washington, D.C., and rely solely on the on-the-ground rule and other bits of present-day ephemera that contribute to source=local_knowledge. In the following post, replace “township” with “parish”:
Replace the photo you found from Facebook with these eight Orleans Parish limit signs. (There are more Orleans Parish limit signs than New Orleans corporation limit signs.)
Replace the news clippings with ones such as:
Are people just using an alternative name for New Orleans? Kind of. I’m sure you can convince people to refer to the two geographies interchangeably. People say they live in “D.C.” and fly out of “Washington”. This doesn’t mean a geographic database can’t maintain coextensive boundaries for both. Heck, sometimes I say I live in San Francisco when I really mean San José. But even so, would people choose to refer to San Francisco County instead of San Francisco, except in statistics and government reports? Hecka no.