Relating to neighboring states/countries: N-S or E-W?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A while back we had a thread that dealt with differing time zones and how moving to a new zone caused long-ranging adjustments to schedules and such.

In a similar spirit, how do you relate to adjacent states (or countries for those outside the USA) in terms of being alike or different?

As a Tennessean who grew up in Alabama, I naturally feel more in tune with the state to the south, but not so much with Kentucky to the north. I don’t relate at all to Arkansas, but a little with North Carolina. Some of this has to do with limited travel to Arkansas, with quite a bit to NC.

I relate less to Georgia than to Mississippi, but quite a bit with Louisiana.

Except for a brother and other relatives in Florida, it might as well be a New England state for me.

How about you?

2

Umm… none, really. Sorry.

3

Here in da UP of Michigan, I would say that most people feel more culturally similiar to Wisconsin than lower Michigan. It goes so far that most people up here are Green Bay Packer fans, not Detroit Lions fans. If you head to the city for a weekend, chances are you’re going to Green Bay, Minneapolis, or Chicago. You don’t hear of people heading to Detroit much.

Wisconsin is roughly south and east of us.

4

Does the fact that you’re separated by water from the LP matter?

How do you relate to Canada?

5

relate?

NM is a vacation destination at best and we try to stay out of OK and AR. LA gets our money for gambling and booze.
We don’t “relate” to anybody.

6

North Dakota is flat and windswept with a tree or two and Tripler.

South Dakota is hilly and windswept.

Iowa has corn and soybeans.

Wisconsin has cheese and the damn dirty Packers.

Canada is pretty empty to the north of us.

7

Water: probably. Getting to downstate Michigan from where I live - one the more populated areas of the UP - requires driving east and south for about 3 hours to get to the Mackinaw bridge. Traverse City, about 150 miles south of us, takes about six hours to drive to.

Canada: we like Canada. It’d be OK to be part of Canada. We like Labatts and Hockey and we say “eh” on the end of sentences.

8

Thanks, Athena,

Part of this same concept is how people in one extreme of a state/country relate to others in their own state/country as opposed to those just across a border. I always get the feeling that people in and near Memphis don’t see themselves as Tennesseeans. Maybe the same applies to Chattanooga, Tri-Cities, Clarksville (what with Ft. Campbell and all).

I really am curious about Europeans, too. Do French people relate better to Germans, Italians, or Brits? And do Brits relate better to Scandinavians or French?

As for Mexicans, do you see USA or Central America as more simpatico?

I must confess little awareness of Aussies and their neighbors, since water separates in all directions. My main suspicion would be for New Zealand being easiest to relate to, but I’m curious about the Philippines and Japan, too.

9

Personally, in the Detroit area, I feel like an anomaly. Metro Detroit is very different from the rest of Michigan, and I don’t feel any particular affinity for any state near me. I honestly would say I feel more in-tune with Ontario (specifically the Windsor area) than other states.

10

That’s really funny. So far we’ve found:

  • Yoopers don’t feel like they’re part of Michigan
  • Detroiters don’t feel like they’re part of Michigan.

So who does feel like they’re part of Michigan?

Oooohhh Shiiirrrrrllley… Shirley Ujest… I’m lookin’ at you

11

Oklahoma City. Smack dab in the middle of the state.

My view is coloured by the fact I’m not a native Okie. I’ve lived in Denver, Houston, LA, Atlanta, and small towns in Lousianna, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Alabama, East Texas, etc…

The city itself feels like almost any other city I’ve lived in. A person can find just about any kind of people to hang out with. Artsy types, biker types, yuppies, freaks, cowboys, city slickers, hicks, etc… Most do tend to run to the right of left, but generally not outrageous or outspokenly so.

For some reason, many people here relate to Dallas, TX. Esp in sports, shopping, entertainment. In a lot of ways, OKC is North Texas. Which I find hilarious because almost every Texan I know looks down on Okies. (I’m a Texan, too, but I like it here.)

Well, that’s the city. The small towns are totally different. NW and W of the City, you may as well be in Kansas or the Texas Panhandle. East of here, we start to get into the Hill People. And the Tulsa area feels just like Kansas City. Far East of here, indistinguishable from the Ozarks. I swear, I have actually met real hillbillies in the Oachita Mountain area. I’ve installed windows in homes that don’t even have a road laeding to them. Cells phones out of service area. Everybody eyein’ ya likes you gonna do terr’bull things to their livestock (which is a goat tied to a tree).

Mostly, tho, I would say that Oklahoma Citians relate more to Dallas and rest of North Texas than to any of the other bordering states.

12

I don’t really relate to any of our neighbours, mainly cause they’re all so damn far away.

Trip to Calgary by car - 7-8 hours.

Trip to Winnipeg by car - 6 or 7 hours.

Trip to Minot by car - 5 or 6 hours.

Trip to NWT by car - 2 days, via Edmonchuk.

Trip to Edmonchuk - don’t. I’ve been there a few times for Rider-Esks games, and concluded that Edmonchuk fans are the meanest in the CFL. Not a pleasant experience. (Unlike the Stamps fans in Calgary, who are warm and welcoming; but then, half of them come from Saskatchewan anyway, and cheer for the right team: :smiley: )

13

There are all sorts of internal cultural attitudes in this part of the world.

Australia and New Zealand basically like one another (and are similar), but Australia probably looks down a little bit at New Zealand sometimes, and NZ looks at Australia with a certain suspicion. The average Australian would be more likely to say the two countries are similar than would the average New Zealander.The largest cities in each country, Sydney and Auckland respectively, are treated a little as Americans think of NYC - they are a bit different from the rest of the country. People outside of them tend not to like them, and people living in them just don’t think about anywhere else.

People in North Island NZ tend to look down on their South Island countrymen as hicks (I think - one of the Kiwis may correct me on this).

Within Australia, the large size of each state makes things interesting. Because the New South Wales capital city of Sydney is about five hundred miles from the nearest state border, many people living on the edges of the state resent Sydney’s authority over them, and they feel more culturally connected to the neighbouring states, whose capital cities are a closer drive, and whose TV they receive. An extreme case of this is the western NSW city of Broken Hill which pretty much ignores its official timezone (Sydney’s), and uses Adelaide time in summer.

Tasmania is looked down on as being Hicksville in a Newfie sort of way, and Queensland is looked down on as being Hicksville in a US Southern religious right sort of way. People in Queensland and the Northern Territory don’t trust “the cities down south”, and folks in Western Australia resent the east coast. Crackpot politicians in both Queensland and Western Australia occasionally make grumbling noises about seceding.

Melbourne people don’t like Sydney. Sydney people don’t care. Everybody hates Canberra.

Indonesia (right next door) is the world’s largest Muslim nation, and has a vast population. It’s about as culturally different from suburban Australia as you can get, and most of us just don’t think about the place much, except for cheap backpacking holidays at the resorts.

That’s it in a vastly overgeneralised nutshell.

14

OKC has almost become a suburb of Dallas. You got the rest of the state right except for Bartlesville. Of all the places in the US I’ve lived and worked, it most reminded me of Rochester, NY.

15

I’m originally from Northern Virginia and I live in DC right now. I would say that myself and most of my friends can relate to either NoVA or Southern Maryland but that is not surprising since they are suburbs to DC. If you go up to say Baltimore which is the next closest metropolitan area then I can say we don’t relate so well. Almost none of my friends go up there at all with the exception of one who went to school there.

16

Some of you have reminded me of another feature of this topic. In the Northeast US, New England, New York, New Jersey, perhaps as far west as PA and as far south as Northern Virginia, the cities and metropolitan areas are almost continuous. I’ve seen nighttime satellite pictures where the lights of the “Boswash” (Boston-to-DC) megalopolis are virtually indistinguishable. So in that section of the country getting from one community to another must be done (I must assume) without any real covering of undeveloped land, and by passing through one community after the next with just road signs to tell you’re leaving one and entering another.

Go further south and there’s much more intervening space with trees and rural areas, so that the larger communities are quite separated from each other. It may be in the hundreds of miles that you travel to get from one decent-sized city to the next one.

Go further west and the distances become even greater, and in the case of Canada (as one Canadian has already stated) it’s hours or days between large metropolitan areas.

I once used a mapping program to determine how long it would take in driving to cover each of the six New England states. It can be done in an afternoon! Using a similar tactic, it would take days to do the same with the Deep South states, and still longer to cover Far West states. Look at a map sometimes and see how all the really big states are west of the Mississippi, while most of the people live east of it. The “population center” of the 50 states (including Alaska and Hawaii) is still in southwestern Illinois.

I’m curious how these facts enter into one’s sense of “relating” to surrounding areas.

17

I checked this detail to learn that it’s now in northwestern Missouri.

18

Make that northEASTern Missouri! :smack:

19

Until you live there for a while. Then you discover it’s a lovely place.

20

Well, of course! It’s where you keep the politicians, after all.