A map of the regions of the US, as voted on by Reddit users. I think this seems mostly correct? One funny artifact: Washington state got some votes for “Northeast”, probably because ppl confused it with D.C. or with “Northwest”.
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As a Washington resident, I'm very used to reminding people Washington is also a state
As a resident of BC, I default to thinking of your state when I hear "Washington".
Unless it's something really stupid, then I just assume (correctly, 99% of the time) that it's the other one.
Hah - that's a good rule of thumb to work from.
because this is close to my heart, it reminded me of this youtube video i watched the other day. (I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would, even though the 'delta' segments seem a bit of a stretch)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNrt-t5GRww
I love the divided opinions of West Virginia!
Wheeling, WV, is north of Philadelphia! (latitudinally speaking)
I was born in Virginia just 20 miles from the West Virginia border and I've never thought of WV as the south. It's appalachia, along with a lot of PA.
Then again… last year I went to all 50 states and the single most overtly racist store / display we saw was in WV, right on the western border of Ohio. I mean, racists are everywhere, but it trumped anything we saw in the deep south.
FWIW I'd divide the US into more than 4 regions. I mean, I'd divide Florida alone into 4 regions:
• South Florida is Latin America
• Central Florida is the 'burbs
• North Florida is the deep south
• The coasts including the keys, except for South Florida is Beachtown
Southwest and Pacific Northwest are not a thing? I think we can subdivide the west, especially since the east coast gets finer divisions. Also, and I'm sure this is a minority view, but would vote to rename the Midwest to Central or North Central. Midwest is an archaic, very east coast-centric label. It really leans more Mid east than mid west!
Southwest and PNW should definitely be their own regions.
I think Albert Burneko did this best back at Deadspin: https://deadspin.com/the-regions-of-the-united-states-1835334319/
I think his key insight is that regions don’t strictly follow state boundaries. And areas can be in multiple regions.
For example: eastern Montana, most of Wyoming and South Dakota, and western North Dakota have more in common as “North Central” states than they do with, say Ohio and the “Midwest” or Oregon and the “Northwest”.
Feel like this should have been a Kottke post. Had the survey simply included the Mid-Atlantic and NW/SW as options, probably would have had less uncertainty in those areas.
Also, being bigger states, metro areas of VA/PA/NY (Northern VA, Philly, NYC) as Burneko points out feel distinctly Mid-Atlantic while Pittsburgh/Buffalo (midwestern) and Richmond (southern) are something else but that's defeating the lovely simplicity of the map.
Related: I’m fond of Colin Woodard’s book “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America“. Helpfully insightful (IMO) about regional histories, cultural ethos, practices, current misunderstandings… https://bookshop.org/p/books/american-nations-a-history-of-the-eleven-rival-regional-cultures-of-north-america-colin-woodard/d22b78d494e56a55?ean=9780143122029&next=t
Also, Alaska and Hawaii should not be included in the “West.”
The Simpsons had it right:
“Excluding Alaska and Hawaii…the freak states.”
let's also add West Virginia and South Florida into the freak state category
These maps are I guess useful as light entertainment, but in terms of actual on-the-ground feel, it's not much. Florida, for example, is decidedly not "The South" for most of the state (especially based on population). There's also a pretty clear distinction between New England and Mid-Atlantic in the NE.
Agreed, Mid-Atlantic is definitely its own thing.
Given that no one seems to agree on even the question of which states belong to which regions, it seems implausible that all of these states belong together in one country.
I'm weirded out that both Illinois and Indiana are solid purple. Southern Indiana and Illinois are definitely "the south".
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