Are St. Louis and New Orleans the last "eastern" cities?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by edale

SF is the oldest major city in the West, and it really grew into something substantial around the same time as Chicago, which is obviously a newer city than the NE cities, and even further east Midwest cities like Cincinnati.

depending on how you define "grew into something substantial", the chicago-cincy lag is similar to the SF-chicago lag.


first census over 100,000 people:

cincy: 1850 (115,435)
chicago: 1860 (112,172)
SF: 1870 (149,473)

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Probably more like, historical presence and legacy of heavy industry, in order to distinguish from cities in the western US which have much more recently engaged in heavy manufacturing.

There's obviously major differences between cities that were built up in the age of iron forges and textile mills and those that were built up in the age of jet engine assembly and semiconductor fabrication plants.



One can hardly claim that Tucson and Santa Fe (or anywhere else in the southwest, northwest, mountain west, etc. US for that matter) developed as cities earlier and in the same sense that eastern US cities developed.

We're talking about American cities here -- that's the context. Not pueblos, not pre-Colonial settlements. You're attempting to make an argument that is way outside of the context of what everyone else is talking about.

As Usual thinly veiled racism from you smh

[Docere]

East North Central

NHW 74.5%
Black 12%
Hispanic 8%
Asian 3.1%

West North Central

NHW 81.3%
Black 6.7%
Hispanic 5.9%
Asian 2.7%

[Docere]

East North Central

German 24%
English/American 13.8%
Irish 11.8%
Polish 6.2%
Italian 5.1%

West North Central

German 31%
English/American 13.7%
Irish 12.1%
Norwegian 6.7%

[Steely Dan]

^ it looks like the poles didn't really cross the mississippi river so much.

obviosuly there's some in st. louis and minneapolis, but nothing like the hordes of poles that swarmed into the great lakes cites.

[Docere]

Wisconsin seems to be the "transitional state" - I think it's about equally Scandinavian and Polish.

[ardecila]

I think it's more interesting to think in terms of certain ideas and cultural traits leaving trails across the landscape, instead of sharp dividing lines.

For example, the use of Spanish Colonial architecture links Florida to Louisiana to California. There's a certain style of Craftsman and gingerbread Victorian architecture that spread across the US in much the same path.

There is a "trunk" of Black music going from New Orleans to Memphis to St Louis to Chicago, and then branching out all over the country. Etc.

[Xing]

When you guys usually bring this up, the discussion was often about architecture and housing stock, but since we brought New Orleans into this, then the architecture and housing stock puts New Orleans into its own realm.

I’d be curious if there are any easily missed small towns that might have the east coast look really far west. It would be random, but interesting to find out.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Xing

When you guys usually bring this up, the discussion was often about architecture and housing stock, but since we brought New Orleans into this, then the architecture and housing stock puts New Orleans into its own realm.

I'm not sure how. Every major city has a pretty diverse mix of architectural styles and its own unique attributes... and New Orleans is obviously no exception. But the types of architecture/housing stock in New Orleans can be seen in many other places.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ it looks like the poles didn't really cross the mississippi river so much.

obviosuly there's some in st. louis and minneapolis, but nothing like the hordes of poles that swarmed into the great lakes cites.

There's a good contingent of partial polish partial German people in Phoenix metro coming from the Midwest

Myself being the most important.

[lio45]

I don't get how one can justify this idea of non-border rivers as a dividing feature; it's the other way around, the closest environment to one shore is the other shore.

For example, here in my home area, which shore of the River the various cities happen to be (Quebec City, Lévis, Trois-Rivières, Sorel, Longueuil/Boucherville/La Prairie, Repentigny, Montréal, etc.) is mostly irrelevant: the river was the highway back in the founding days. Being on one shore instead of the other is like being on one side of the main street instead of the other side: what matters is you're in the same city AND with Main Street frontage. The side isn't a big deal.

Same thing in the US even with state borders. In my neck of the woods for example (northern New England), the Connecticut River valley, the towns are the same, the economies are the same, whether you're on one side or the other. I'm sure a farm on the Red River is the same whether it's in Oklahoma or Texas. Etc.

Now, if it's a border, then okay, it changes things. The Rhine at Strasbourg, it's relevant to know which shore you're on. But the Rhine at Cologne, it doesn't matter on which side downtown Cologne is, no? (Well, it did in Roman times, but nowadays, it doesn't.)

Is it a big deal which side Memphis is? Would things be entirely different if it were on the same side as St. Louis (i.e. in Arkansas)? Wouldn't change much, IMO.

Now, the point where agriculture becomes ranchland, THAT is going to change a lot of things. That's a "border" between areas.

All the maps coincide in that point being a "border": the precipitation map I posted, the population density map Obadno posted, the classic "U.S. from space at night map", etc.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Obadno

I don't get how anyone can look at the maps above and think the Mississippi matters, let alone is THE dividing line between the two halves of the country.

[pj3000]

I think that the Ohio River is more of a cultural dividing line than the Mississippi River, at least in popular perception.

[lio45]

So when you go to the other area (trans-Ohio) of Pittsburgh, it feels like a foreign land?

[Buckeye Native 001]

Originally Posted by pj3000

I think that the Ohio River is more of a cultural dividing line than the Mississippi River, at least in popular perception.

Which begs the age-old question: What the fuck are Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Louisville!?

[AviationGuy]

Originally Posted by jd3189

^^^ Looks like Texas is the biggest transitional state between East and West. And that map makes a lot of sense. The Western US is drier overall and shaped by mountains, valleys, deserts, and plains. The Eastern US is wetter, more humid, and more green overall, being surrounded by more bodies of water ( Great lakes, rivers, Gulf of Mexico, etc).


By those definitions, I would say Amarillo is one of the Easternmost Western cities and Dallas could be considered one of the most Westernmost Eastern cities

I would agree pretty much. I see DFW as very midwestern in precip and vegetation, although warmer on an annual average basis. I see Midland-Odessa as very western climate-wise (very dry), although within those cities there are a lot of leafy neighborhoods. El Paso, however, is like Tucson, with a lot of adobe homes, mountains, and desert. it's the only city in Texas that looks southwestern.

Austin is transitional, with midwestern precipitation, but a unique blend of east and west regarding the scenic terrain of the hill country, that begins within the city on the west side, just west of downtown.

East Texas is no different than the rest of the south, with rolling to hilly piney woods. If you're in Tyler-Longview or Lufkin, for example, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference from being in the Carolinas (e.g., Raleigh-Durham) as far as landscape. Houston is very wet, partly pine forest, partly swamp, partly coastal plain. The sprawling burbs look pretty much like any U.S. burbs. Parts of the inner loop look like NOLA with housing styles (parts of the Heights), other close in areas look very southern, others very eastern. There are neighborhoods in the piney woods areas of the city proper where it would be difficult to tell that you aren't in the east somewhere.

I was longwinded on this, but yes, transition is a good way to state it.

[jd3189]

The US is very similar to China in this respect. But the latter is more extreme with almost all of the more than 1 billion Chinese living on the Eastern half of the country. There's no analog to the West Coast, obviously.

On second thought thought, Brazil is probably more comparable to China in geographic distribution of population.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I've always thought of every city east of the Mississippi as an "eastern" city. I don't consider "eastern city" and "east coast city" to mean the same thing.

Not me. To me, east means states along the eastern seaboard and even then, when most people refer to 'east' they usually mean the northeast as the Southeast has it's own regional identity.

As for Texas, it's its own thing; neither Southern, Midwestern or Southwestern even if has characteristics of all three. Houston has a shared history and climate with much of the Gulf Coast south but its uniquely Texan. Houston has a large black population which is typical of southern cities but an even larger Hispanic population which the South lacks in significant numbers for the most part.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by AviationGuy

El Paso, however, is like Tucson, with a lot of adobe homes, mountains, and desert. it's the only city in Texas that looks southwestern.

On a related note, I was looking at Texas real estate sorted by price for the whole state (only search criterion was that it had to be 100+ years old, I was just curious at what sort of middle-of-nowhere antebellum mansion I could find ) and you know what's amusing, I was looking at the list (not map) in order of price so they were always all over the state (and often in tiny towns whose names I didn't know so no idea what part of the state they were in) but I could immediately tell just by the picture whenever a house was in El Paso. Very distinctive style - plus the yard is desert and the sky is usually perfectly clear and intense blue.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by pj3000

I think that the Ohio River is more of a cultural dividing line than the Mississippi River, at least in popular perception.

The Mason-Dixon Line or the Potomac would be even bigger cultural dividing lines, right?