Good point. Let say that during the SAR the Americans demand New York and the British want ti keep it, so for a compromise, it is created as a Free City. New Yorker identity develops soon after.Interesting, but surely if a city (NYC in this example) is very loyalist during ARW1, and in fact during the war essentially ejects most of its "patriots" and replaces them with loyalist refugees, then the war is lost and the loyalists are therefore the "winning side", every patriot with strong beliefs is going to avoid that city like the plague? It'd become the heart of pro/anti-British tensions, and probably the capital of pro-British sentiment.
My take, anyway.