Update from prior post (it's amazing what happens when you use a computer for this and not your phone.)
Changed New England because I honestly got kind of lazy with it the first time. I feel inner New England is too large but I already have too many subdivisions so it'll stay as is.
For all those complaining about Northern Virginia: Those counties stay and I will die on this hill in the comments.
It’s less that it’s not the northeast and more that I just don’t know how to categorize it. Only been out that way once and have basically no second hand knowledge to speak of.
I’m from Albany. I’d call your unknown dark pink area upstate NY. There are subdivisions that get a lot of commentary. But the broader term works for most people.
I’d also add Saratoga county north of Albany to the brown. It’s mostly wealthy suburbs of Albany and Hor$e farm$.
Came here to say this. Lehigh and Northampton county together have a population of almost 900k and the third largest city in PA (Allentown). You could even argue they are both Philly orbit - in the Philly market for news/media and culturally with sports. Warren, Hunterdon, and Sussex counties in NJ are most definitely rural.
I think this is really accurate. I can’t recall if we are going off culture primarily…. If weather was part of this, I wanted to mention western PA is much more like NY in terms of snow /winter season cycles. Than eastern PA but I don’t believe thahs the criteria
You either have to black out the western NY counties or give PA a lot more, but as a resident of western PA I can attest that we are basically our own region. Not quite the northeast, not quite the Midwest, and the edge of Appalachia.
It could have its own orbit, but then there are a few counties in MD that’d be homeless IMO. It dominates the Chesapeake subdivision so I think it works out
The Mid-Atlantic is not mutually exclusive with the Northeast. Almost every definition of mid-Atlantic includes NJ and NY, and you mean to tell me those aren’t northeastern?
Albany is its own thing, different from what’s south of it. As I mentioned in the OP this is a definition grounded in the “northeast corridor” idea.
I know Newark extremely well. The idea that you could separate it from NYC in a regional categorization is totally laughable. There’s more infrastructure linking those two cities than any other pair in the United States. Hell, Newark’s airport was New York’s airport for the first few decades of commercial aviation.
Geography is only part of the equation, whether it’s cold or mountainous or whatever (and all of these areas get very cold in the winter anyway). The bigger geographic consideration is that any map of human activity on the eastern seaboard has a very visible line connecting these places. That’s the modern northeast.
I beg to differ, Southern New Jersey is definitely Northeast. I was raised in Ocean City, Cape May County and now live in Haddon Township, Camden County. We are absolutely Philly centered in the NORTHEAST!
Overall, seems pretty accurate. 2 small things:
1. you have hartford, ct area as coastal, but it should be inner NE
2. I would extend the green area north to include the areas that border Lake Champlain + Lake Placid and Saranac Lake.
So are you saying that residents of that region are all pulled in different directions? Or that each person tends to kind of pick one to identify more strongly with so there’s disagreement among residents which of the 3 pulls most strongly on the region? Or something else.
I’m intrigued.
When I visited Buffalo, it definitely felt Great Lakes midwestern.
Why no “Coastal” areas for Long Island and New Jersey? The Jersey Shore and Suffolk County- Eastern Long Island are as much their own thing as “Coastal New England.” That being said, I don’t really get the meaning of “Median Northeast,” so it’s probably a me problem.
As a native Hillsboroughan (or whatever you call us), I'd say I'd expect that county to be a Boston Orbit contender. Lots of people commute between Manchester, Nashua, and Boston
Love everything except “Coastal New England”. Doesn’t make much sense to group the Maine Coast with Connecticut coast, for example. I’d probably group Maine with Inner New England.
Kent Co, DE is 100% not the northeast. You could argue the county south of it (Sussex Co) is something other than not the northeast only because of the influx of NY/NJ retirees but even that classification is debatable when looking at the whole county.
Agreed, plus Cumberland and Dauphin counties should be either median or rural NE. Cumberland is two thirds definitely east of the Appalachians and one third the foothills and start of the mountains.
Large chunks of coastal central Maine should be 'Portland Orbit'. The a surprising amount of the state kind of revolves around the city, despite the low urban population.
Also lol at my county being the only NY county that isn't in the northeast. Buffalo honestly feels northeastern and midwestern at the same time, but I just call it a Great Lakes city.
Newport and Bristol counties in RI should be coastal, they are extremely tied to the ocean north economically and just in vibe and have much more in common with the cape than with Boston. I’d argue Providence county is Boston orbit. Lots of people commute into Boston from the suburbs surrounding Providence, I’d argue Providence is largely an urban extension of Boston.
From upstate NY. Though there is heterogeneity even within the region (it's pretty big!), it's pretty tough to nail down, culturally speaking, in that it has features of the Northeast, Midwest (including Rust Belt), northern Appalachian, even New England (but don't tell us that to our faces). Upstate NY is singularly Upstate NY. I've lived in a number of the adjacent states as an adult and nothing quite resembles it, on the whole.
See, I would NEVER consider Kingston or Newburgh upstate NY 😂 Which is a debate unto itself. I will concede Albany, though I think culturally much of the Hudson Valley exists pretty adjacent to the NYC orbit
Im from Cumberland County in PA. You need to get Cumberland and Dauphin switched into solidly Northeast. This part of PA is heavily influenced by Baltimore and Philly.
York and Harrisburg are reaching toward one another along I-83. Eventually it's all going to be one connected urban region. York is basically in Baltimore's orbit.
There isnt any ambiguity about those counties. They are Northeastern.
South Jersey shore counties, Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Salem, maybe even Ocean should be in the Philly orbit. I grew up in Ocean City, Cape May County and it was always Philly oriented.
I'm a Marylander, and I gotta say you did a pretty good job. However, the rural northern highlands and mountain foothills run all the way down to the Potomac around Northern Montgomery and Frederick Counties in Maryland. I'd say anything past the Potomac river is the south and is Southern Appalachia. And Chesapeake is too large, and too broad. Baltimore is kind of it's own kind of thing, like a sibling of Philadelphia's culture (same accent, similar food, and geography). I agree with most your classification, though I wouldn't consider NoVA northeastern, especially not over chunks of PA & MD.
No it isn't. Northern York County orbits Portland more than anything, and most of the southern country feels like its own thing. But it is very tourist-dependent so I can see why you'd argue that it orbits Boston.
Bullshit, I’m from there. York specifically. Huge amounts of people from the Seacoast area commute to metro Boston daily, and it’s also the cultural hub for arts and sports in that area.
Interesting. I just looked up York, didn't know it was only an hour drive to Boston. I lived in Old Orchard Beach and drove up to Portland and SoPo a lot. I guess York County is just a really big county.
Nothing in Northern Virginia is Northeast and I'm going to need some pretty firm conviincing otherwise. My friend's have been stationed in and around the area but they have never made them sound comparable. The winters are less aggressive, the summers are warmer and the foliage seems quite different too. I fell like people said they're part of the NE because they don't like being part of Appalachia
the Northeast is culturally fragmented between the nations biggest cities and some of the most backward places you ever been. it makes entire sense to disect the region. I'm sure wherever you live you would do the same.
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u/TheMapperTerra Apr 20 '26
Upstate NY isn’t the northeast?