Let’s not forget Downstate Medical Center, which is in Brooklyn, NY - which is downstate. Is there an Upstate Medical Center as well?
Minnesota also has an ‘outstate’, referring to the mostly rural part of the state outside the Twin Cities metro area.
Though the current politically correct term is “Greater Minnesota”. But because that’as longer & harder to say, most people still use ‘outstate’ in everything except political speeches or fromal writings.
Yes, in Syracuse.
On the Upstate/Downstate line, I have seen it drawn
[ul]
[li]on the northern Brons boundary;[/li][li]north of the heavily urbanized group of cities and towns just north of the Bronx (Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Rye, etc.);[/li][li]north of Westchester County;[/li][li]north of Rockland and Puytnam Counties.[/li][/ul]
Two minor nitpicks:
Everything north of Westchester County, as Polycarp suggests above.
There are also the Southern Tier and the East End of Long Island (pretty much everything east of the Shinnecock canal).
Ditto Michigan.
“Going Up North this weekend.”
So true! To my family, I live in southern Illinois. To the people here, it’s central Illinois.
Depending on the laws they’re passing, Springfield can be Chicago or downstate. Usually it’s a Chicago clone.
We do in fact have an Upstate here in South Carolina but we would never say “Upstate South Carolina” like they do in New York. We say “the Upstate”, as in “I heard it might snow tonight, but that’s just in the Upstate.”
ETA - we definitely also have a Lowcountry, and people say that a lot. Probably more than “upstate”, actually. That has a cultural meaning as well as a geographical one, though. Additionally, people do use the geographical divisions we learned in school (mountains, piedmont, sandhills, etc.) as well as “Midlands”, which is where I live and is also a widely used term.
Maine doesn’t have an “upstate” because, besides Portland, it’s all upstate. We do have a “downeast.” We also have “The County,” referring to Aroostook County (where I grew up) that encompasses pretty much most of the northern tip of the state and consists mostly of trees.
I thought it was the largest county (in area) in the states, but apparently there’s one bigger in Missouri.
But I digress … as usual.
There are plenty of cities with a downtown but no uptown. Oxford, Ohio, has an uptown but no downtown.
Northern Ohioans will sometimes refer to “downstate” Ohio (i.e. the realm of hicks, rednecks and hillbillies), but I don’t know if the reverse is true.
Actually, we have “up nort dere”.
As a southern Ohioan, I have never heard anyone use “downstate” or “upstate.” We just say “northern” and “southern.”
I prefer to think of it as
Upstate = north of where I live
So what’s the etymology - that upstate NY and SC are literally at higher elevations than the coastal cities, or that they’re upriver?
Side note: Columbus native here. There’s northern, central, and southern Ohio to us. We resent being lumped in with the *real *rednecks in southern Ohio, even though we say the world “Ahia” in the same Appalachian accent they use. We grew up hearing West Virginian jokes, too.
Come to think of it, those of us from Dayton and Cincinnati tend to refer to “southwestern” Ohio, because we don’t want to be lumped in with Appalachia either.
And we also say “Ahia.” “Date Nahia.”
I once had a “New York City Centrist” coworker who denied the existence of “Southern Tier” as a term, as he’d never heard it. I’d brought it up because I went to school in the region, and was describing where the school was. When pressed, he eventually retreated into the “That’s all upstate, who cares?” ploy.
In New York, upstate means anything north of NYC, except for Long Island. In usage, anything north of where you are in NY is upstate. Your next door neighbor on the north side lives upstate. Long Island is excepted, even though much of it is further north than upstate areas in Westchester. Since NYC is the southernmost part of the state, I think it was intended to refer to the mainland part of the state north of the city.
Here in upstate NY, both are true. (And come to think of it, being at a higher elevation very often goes with being upriver, doesn’t it? Water flowing downhill and all.)
Both, and also in shape, what with South Carolina being shaped like a piece of pie. Mmm, pie.
Living in MI for 27 years, I’ve also heard ‘outstate’ - anything that’s not meto Detroit. Haven’t heard that so much recently, maybe because Detroit ain’t what it used to be.