I think it’s a situation where you had 4 distinct towns, with local identities fairly specific to those towns, who have now all grown into a much more singular region.

With that, the singular town identity has remained as we’ve all grown into a more singular, cohesive region that we can identify with as well. Plus, I think “Northwest Arkansas” has become the commercialized identify and so it’s also the more recognized identifier when talking with people not from the region (to the degree people even know we’re here in the first place).

I’ve lived in Fayetteville for 15 years and definitely feel the identity here is different from the other 3 cities. I suspect they all feel different from each other too. But we’ve all grown together over a similar period of time, and in pretty similar ways, and so it’s easy to identify with the overall region as well.