most bohemian midwest city??

[10023]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

and just an addendum, just because an area doesn’t conform to a specific, great-lakes centric version of midwestern, doesn’t mean it’s not. there’s generally three flavors to my mind: great lakes, plains/prairie, and river city.

i also think people confuse/distort the statistical inability of the populations of a basket of cities to overpower rural red state populations for a drastic cultural difference or backwardness of said cities.

Well, the Great Lakes area is unequivocally Midwestern. The “river cities” (assuming you mean Cincy and St Louis) blend into Southern, and the Plains become quite Western. Why is Omaha the Midwest but not Denver? Why Cincinnati but not Louisville.

Lines need to be drawn somewhere, and places probably get less truly Midwestern the farther one is from Chicago. St Louis, like Cleveland, is probably near the edge of the Midwest, not right in its center.

[10023]

Also:



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Belt


That’s an enormous influence on culture. There’s a transition zone, and so yes, southwest Ohio, southern Indiana and Illinois, and northern Missouri are still “Midwestern”. But southern Missouri is, not, and Oklahoma is definitely not.

[Chef]

By the same token there are people here in Minnesota who consider Nebraska and the Dakotas to be bedrock Midwestern states but think that Ohio is too eastern to really be part of the Midwest. I think the census definition of the Midwest is the best.

[iheartthed]

My definition of midwest is pretty much limited to the states created from the Northwest Territory, plus Missouri and Iowa. It almost perfectly overlaps the Big 10 territory pre-2000s expansion.

[JoeMusashi]

There are two sub-regions of the Midwest—Great Plains and Great Lakes. Nebraska, the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas are generally considered Great Plains. Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio in the Great Lakes.

Missouri was a border state during the Civil War but I’d consider it apart of the Midwest today. St. Louis more towards the Great Lakes side, KC to the Great Plains. I don’t consider WV or Kentucky as apart of the region, as a Midwesterner.

[Buckeye Native 001]

Hell if I know what is Northern Kentucky (Cincinnati suburbs) and half my family lives there...

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by JoeMusashi

There are two sub-regions of the Midwest—Great Plains and Great Lakes. Nebraska, the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas are generally considered Great Plains. Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio in the Great Lakes.

Missouri was a border state during the Civil War but I’d consider it apart of the Midwest today. St. Louis more towards the Great Lakes side, KC to the Great Plains. I don’t consider WV or Kentucky as apart of the region, as a Midwesterner.

But the Great Plains have only recently been blurred into the midwest identity. "Midwest" originated as a regional identity for the Northwest Territory. I personally see the Great Plains and Great Lakes as very distinct identities. I think the Great Lakes region has more cultural overlap with the Northeast than it does the Plains, so it never made much sense to me that it's lumped in with the Plains.

[Chef]

The Great Plains have been part of the Midwest for at least a century.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by 10023

You can make a case for Erie and Buffalo as Midwestern cities, but that’s about it.

What is just absurd and wrong is when people refer to the Dakotas or Oklahoma as Midwestern states.

Aside from their being on a Great Lake, both Erie and Buffalo are just too affiliated with New York State (and northern PA) to really make a cogent case for them as Midwestern cities. They're just a lot like all the other Upstate and Southern/Northern Tier cities in NY and PA, yet they're actually situated right on a Lake. The two cities, like all the others in this area, undeniably look to the east for affiliation/connection. Growing up in the region, Philadelphia, New York, DC, Baltimore, etc. were right on my radar largely because of pro, minor league, college, and high school sports affiliations, but also because that's where family members were from, where we went to vacation, where people went to college, moved to work for, etc. Whereas, Chicago, St. Louis, Indianpolis, Minneapolis, etc. might as well have been on the West coast for us. Cleveland was as far west as I had ever been until I was 25.

I think Cleveland/Akron is really right on the edge of the Midwest... and as you go west of that area, you can definitely recognize a change in the terrain to a flatter, more large agriculture-based region. Somewhat similarly to driving from Pittsburgh thru Columbus... once you pass Zanesville on I-70, it really starts to flatten out and become much more agricultural... which continues on through Columbus and on and on and on. The huge industrial-scale agricultural vastness of the eastern plains begins and that begins to define the historical economic/political/socio-cultural landscape of the region... and it's markedly different than in western PA/western NY.

Originally Posted by 10023

Well, the Great Lakes area is unequivocally Midwestern. The “river cities” (assuming you mean Cincy and St Louis) blend into Southern, and the Plains become quite Western. Why is Omaha the Midwest but not Denver? Why Cincinnati but not Louisville.

Lines need to be drawn somewhere, and places probably get less truly Midwestern the farther one is from Chicago. St Louis, like Cleveland, is probably near the edge of the Midwest, not right in its center.

This all sounds good. Though I'd qualify it with the eastern half of the Lake Erie region and Lake Ontario region being Northeastern.

[austlar1]

Bible Belt notwithstanding, Oklahoma is definitely "Midwestern" in much the same way as Kansas and Nebraska. A simple drive along the IH 35 corridor or a visit to Oklahoma City and Tulsa will confirm this to be the case.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Aside from their being on a Great Lake, both Erie and Buffalo are just too affiliated with New York State (and northern PA) to really make a cogent case for them as Midwestern cities. They're just a lot like all the other Upstate and Southern/Northern Tier cities in NY and PA, yet they're actually situated right on a Lake. The two cities, like all the others in this area, undeniably look to the east for affiliation/connection. Growing up in the region, Philadelphia, New York, DC, Baltimore, etc. were right on my radar largely because of pro, minor league, college, and high school sports affiliations, but also because that's where family members were from, where we went to vacation, where people went to college, moved to work for, etc. Whereas, Chicago, St. Louis, Indianpolis, Minneapolis, etc. might as well have been on the West coast for us. Cleveland was as far west as I had ever been until I was 25.

This isn't really different from my experience growing up in Detroit/Michigan. Other than Chicago, most of the "midwest" that is west of Detroit is really far from Detroit.
The only time I ever traveled to another midwest city before I was an adult was during a road trip my senior year of high school for a chess tournament in KC, during which we stopped briefly in StL. Before that I'd never been to any midwest state other than Ohio, but I'd already been to most of the states on the east coast, California, Nevada, and also Ontario. And my first real visit to Chicago was after college when I was already living in NYC.

Detroit is closer to just about every major city on the east coast than it is to KC, even though they're both midwest cities. Detroit is roughly the same distance from Atlanta as it is from KC. Minneapolis is also nearly just as far from Detroit as is KC.

[Nomad9]

Originally Posted by JoeMusashi

There are two sub-regions of the Midwest—Great Plains and Great Lakes. Nebraska, the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas are generally considered Great Plains. Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio in the Great Lakes.

Missouri was a border state during the Civil War but I’d consider it apart of the Midwest today. St. Louis more towards the Great Lakes side, KC to the Great Plains. I don’t consider WV or Kentucky as apart of the region, as a Midwesterner.

I agree with this definition. No way Sioux Falls, Fargo, and Omaha aren’t “Midwest.” Just like any other major geographic region, there are subregions within them. The area between the Rockies’ Front Range and around the longitudinal line that I-35/135 (in Kansas) sits is what I would consider the “high plains” region, which I wouldn’t consider Midwest. That country has a higher elevation, less moisture, fewer people, and mostly wheat/rangeland, rather than the corn and soy beans.

[10023]

Originally Posted by austlar1

Bible Belt notwithstanding, Oklahoma is definitely "Midwestern" in much the same way as Kansas and Nebraska. A simple drive along the IH 35 corridor or a visit to Oklahoma City and Tulsa will confirm this to be the case.

This is a Texas perspective, and it’s wrong.

[Crawford]

Oklahoma is the same region as Dallas. It's basically Far North TX.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Chef

By the same token there are people here in Minnesota who consider Nebraska and the Dakotas to be bedrock Midwestern states but think that Ohio is too eastern to really be part of the Midwest. I think the census definition of the Midwest is the best.

exactly, and theres people who think that great lakes cities are in fact not inherently “the best” representation of what the midwest is, and think of themselves as great-lakers.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by 10023

This is a Texas perspective, and it’s wrong.

you’re like doing with midwestern geography what victorians did with world history and anthropology. just because you think your well-defined theory based upon your chicago/wisco-centric experiences is right, doesn’t mean that’s the way it actually works on the ground.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Oklahoma is the same region as Dallas. It's basically Far North TX.

That’s not true. Northeast OK has a different feel and physical setting than the capital region. I think there is a distinct difference between Tulsa and OKC.

Physically: OKC feels slightly closer to a Dallas, whereas Tulsa definitely not. Tulsa is also greener with larger green trees and OKC is slightly less vegetated.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

That’s not true. Northeast OK has a different feel and physical setting than the capital region. I think there is a distinct difference between Tulsa and OKC.

Physically: OKC feels slightly closer to a Dallas, whereas Tulsa definitely not. Tulsa is also greener with larger green trees and OKC is slightly less vegetated.

i concur, theres a kind of contour interval between the two.

[mhays]

This main lesson of this thread is like so many other topics -- geographic boundaries are subjective.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

i concur, theres a kind of contour interval between the two.

My first time in Tulsa, I thought wow, why is this not on the national map? When you hear Oklahoma, you automatically think of OKC and that it’s all flat and homogenous! Not true.

OKC was what I stereotypically thought of OK to be. Tulsa definitely not and that’s not a dig at OKC it’s just that the difference between the two along the 44 freeway was striking.