In recent years, seismic wave propagation analyses have become a powerful tool to evaluate the site effects in a given region. Among several approaches, the Spectral Element Method (SEM) has been widely used with that purpose because of its flexibility and computational efficiency. The multiple interactions between the soil and structures, denominated site-city effects (SCI), can play a crucial role in densely populated areas. There are many options to model this kind of interaction, especially if the buildings are partially embedded on the soil. This paper evaluates the importance of the proper SCI modeling against more standard uncoupled approaches, focusing on the local interaction between the soil and a group of buildings including inelastic soil behavior. We focus our work on the case of downtown Viña del Mar, a touristic coastal city of central Chile, where the observation of a reiterated distribution of damage in reinforced concrete buildings during two major earthquakes has motivated numerous studies. For that purpose, a realistic 3D numerical model of the area is created, considering the existing buildings. In general, the results indicate that the inclusion of the SCI reduces the maximum interstory drift in most cases, and that the SCI modeling needs to considerate the level of embedment to obtain more precise results.