My own rule is to use the word
uptown to refer only to the northern direction or districts in Manhattan. The central business district for me elsewhere is always located
downtown.
It was that way originally in NYC, too. In the 19th Century, Manhattan expanded gradually northwards from the city center in lower Manhattan, and travelers toward the then mainly residential district to the north quite logically traveled uptown. You can tell this by the numbering of the streets, by the way. Even NYC didn't start out with a 42nd street. The use of
downtown to denote city centers elsewhere in the U.S. no doubt stems from this early usage in NYC. For me and most of the people I've heard where I live,
downtown is still the right word for the main commercial district of any city or town. I have, though, fairly often encountered the word
uptown used in this sense. I've always taken it to be a confusion, influenced perhaps by usages like the more commonly British expression to "go up to town." Apparently, though, the
uptown usage is more widespread than I thought. In a recent post in the Discussion Room, for example, Cattywampus, from Olympia, Washington, is apparently using
up where I can only use
down. Clearly, there is a kind of dialect difference here, but I'm at a loss to explain its distribution geographically.
