Here in Minnesota, the terminology is generally binary: “outstate” and “the Cities” (shorthand for Minneapolis-St. Paul and their suburbs). But this is overly crude and reductive, given that there are very liberal areas as well as more predictably conservative areas of “outstate” Minnesota, and some rural areas are about farming while others are into mining, and yet others manufacturing or tourism.
I really like this way of defining the regions of New York state. But I lived in Jersey City and worked in Manhattan (Soho, Wall Street, and Midtown at various points), and my coworkers had a much more expansive definition of “upstate”. Poughkeepsie and Newburgh definitely qualified; maybe even Peekskill. They would say drawing the line at Kingston is way too far out.
It’s been my observation over the decades that south of Croton is more suburban-ey, and north of there ( the rest of the county and beyond ) has an increasingly exurban feel.
The extremes though, seem inveterate:
Many I’ve met from upstate upstate, that is, geographically speaking, tend to think anywhere in the Hudson valley south of Newburgh-ish as “the city”, usually in a derisive way.
Many I’ve met in/from the 5 boroughs seem to regard anything north of the Bronx/Westchester County border as upstate. Not disparagingly, but with an almost affectionate contempt.
Just my observations from being in the mid/lower Hudson valley from the 70s through the 90s.
IMO Poughkeepsie is definitely on the demarcation line, but I am on the fence about which side it is on. In the majority of ways it is like other Upstate towns, but it has commuter rail service to the City, which is a strong argument that it is in NYC’s orbit.
What generates wealth for a region is access to resources and access to trade. Once a region becomes sufficiently wealthy it can become a Schelling point for people and resources and the growth can feed on itself.
For example Hollywood became the go to place for filming movies because of the great weather and variable topography. Now that weather is less important it still is the center of the movie industry because people who want to be a part of the movie business know that is where you need to go to be a part of it.
Historically the Northeast has been the richest part of the US because of good ports like Boston and NYC and navigable rivers to transport goods to the interior. Until the railroad the Midwest lacked access to cheap transportation. Until the invention of modern medicine the south had too many tropical diseases to support a large population.
The Rust belt became a rich area due to access to coal and rivers to cheaply transport goods.
Now that we are in the information age the Schelling point cities are driving more and more of the growth, especially since the crime wave reversed.
I’ll agree that Kingston is on the border between the New York City region and the Upstate New York region. I’d accept it going either way.
Where Northern New York begins is also vague. Is Watertown part of Northern New York or Upstate New York? I feel the city itself and the 81 corridor up to Alexandria Bay are Upstate. But the surrounding communities like Carthage, Lowville, and Boonville are Northern.
Hollywood is a good example of businesses and people concentrating where expertise is easy to find. Just want to add a reminder that the movie business was never a major industry. It got far more publicity than all the other industries combined, but was relatively small both in terms of revenues and jobs.
Los Angeles grew on the basis of shipping, oil, farming, and the garment industry, a low-glamour field in which it ranked second only to New York. WWII drove the aerospace industry and that became the largest manufacturing group. No industry ever dominated the economy, which helped buffer the area during downturns.
There’s also the thirty mile zone rule. It’s a thirty mile circle in Los Angeles that’s considered “local” for making movies and television programs. Within this zone, cast and crew are responsible for their own lodging, food, and transportation. Outside of the TMZ is considered an “on location” production and the studio has to provide lodging, food, and transportation, which is obviously more expensive. These rules focus a huge amount of film making businesses within the zone.
Possibly apocryphal story: D. W. Griffiths was the first big time movie director to set up on the West Coast. He had planned to film a western (The Squaw Man IIRC) in Arizona, But his train arrived there during the monsoon season, and it was pouring rain. They got right back on the train and continued on to California.
Sounds like a good story, but the Biograph Company had sent D.W. to LA with his stock players. They filmed several films. He raved about the location and with the much more important bonus of avoiding Edison fees, Hollywood was then founded.
That’s funny. So people in Albany thought you were a city slicker, and people from within the actual boroughs thought you were from upstate. I guess that region needs its own name: just like we have midtown Manhattan between uptown and downtown, that should be “midstate”.
The only people I ever talked to about this definition were people in the city. So no wonder they used a fairly expansive definition of “upstate”, although they didn’t seem to take it right to the borders of the Bronx like you are talking about.[/spoiler]
Places I’ve lived:
Kingston, NY: I considered Kingston upstate and Poughkeepsie sort of part of the city. But that’s me.
Louisville, KY: One of the cities on a river, such as Cincinnati, Memphis and St. Louis. It really depends on what they did since being on a river wasn’t a big advantage.
Nashville, TN: A “rich” area, including one of the wealthiest counties in the country.
In the rural area of Tennessee: Going to Walmart and travelling to parts of the town I see poor people/housing. It’s like a different world.
How much of this is the state vs. regions of a state? Maybe rural Illinois isn’t that much different than rural Tennessee. Caliafornia has Hollywood. Tennessee has country music.
You’ve got to remember something- under certain circumstances, “upstate” and “downstate” are directions as well as regions, just like “uptown” and “downtown” . For example, if I’m at the 23 St train station and am taking the train to 42 St, I am taking uptown train, even though 42 St is not “uptown”. People from NYC generally don’t consider Peekskill to be part of “upstate” - they might use the directional upstate to refer to Peekskill ( for ex “Why can’t my job give this training in the city instead of sending me upstate to Peekskill?”) or as shorthand to refer to cultural differences between NYC and the rest of the state. but nobody from NYC says “I’m going upstate on vacation” and means Westchester*.
There is also “going upstate” meaning state prison and that does include the prisons in Westchester county.
Doesn’t that depend on the part of town? It has been a few years now, but the one time I went to Nashville I took a wrong turn and found myself at a shopping center in what looked like a very poor neighborhood indeed. Liquor stores, payday lenders, vacant lots, graffiti: all the markers of poverty I was familiar with from other places I have lived like inner-city Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Jersey City; and places I have visited like Chicago, Kansas City, and Oakland.
I graphed that table and it is really interesting! DC metro is the far and away highest (by $7K), then the next 12 go down moderately rapidly. Then there is this huge $4.5k jump between Baltimore and Atlanta. Then starting with Atlanta and going to the next 258 cities, it is a VERY gentle slope down. then the last 10 or so start dropping faster and bottoming out at Aguadilla Puerto Rico.
