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The Midwest is often thought to include Great Lakes and Great Plains subregions.
The Census Bureau has split the Midwest into 2 subregions: East North Central and West North Central. ENC (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin) corresponds pretty closely to the Great Lakes/"rust belt" while WNC is more "the rest" including the Great Plains states of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas plus Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri which don't quite fit in either Great Lakes or Great Plains.
So what do other posters think are the subregions of the Midwest?
It's possible of course to argue that Great Lakes and Great Plains continue beyond the official Midwest, stretching into western New York in the former and into Montana and eastern Colorado etc. in the latter.
The Midwest is often thought to include Great Lakes and Great Plains subregions.
The Census Bureau has split the Midwest into 2 subregions: East North Central and West North Central. ENC (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin) corresponds pretty closely to the Great Lakes/"rust belt" while WNC is more "the rest" including the Great Plains states of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas plus Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri which don't quite fit in either Great Lakes or Great Plains.
So what do other posters think are the subregions of the Midwest?
It's possible of course to argue that Great Lakes and Great Plains continue beyond the official Midwest, stretching into western New York in the former and into Montana and eastern Colorado etc. in the latter.
Lower Midwest: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri
Upper Midwest: Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota
Great Plains: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas
I agree with that for the most part, except I'd consider Iowa a hard state to classify, as it's far too "generic Midwest" to be distinctively Upper Midwestern, yet doesn't border a Southern state or have Southern influences like all of the Lower Midwestern states. It's sort of just hanging out on its own, doing its own thing.
Lower Midwest: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri
Upper Midwest: Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota
Great Plains: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas
This division is a little hard to be accurate because state boundaries don't mark stark cultural dividers. For example, S. WI and N. IL are pretty similar to one another. You could make a similar argument for S. MI and N. IN/OH. IA is very similar to NE on one end and IL on the other, so I'm not sure an Upper Midwest moniker is quite appropriate. I generally like the Great Lakes vs. Great Plains division, but then a few states are left in limbo.
I might argue for a division of the non Great Plains states into upper (Chicago, Mke, Detroit, all the way up to Mpls etc.), central (Columbus, Indianapolis, Peoria, Des Moines, etc.), and lower Midwest (Cincinnati, Evansville, maybe St. Louis).
Lower Midwest: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri
Upper Midwest: Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota
Great Plains: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas
Not sure about this.
Is Wisconsin, overall, more linked with the industrial heartland or with Minnesota? Most of the state's land area is more like the latter, but the population is concentrated in the rust belt part.
Is Michigan more similar to Ohio or Wisconsin? On the one hand, Ohio has nothing like the Upper Peninsula, but on the other hand most of the population lives closest to Ohio.
As for "upper Midwest" and "lower Midwest", I think the dividing line should be the Illinois and Wisconsin border. Draw a line east and west of it, everything north is "upper" and everything south of it is "lower". This basically divides the region into two halves that are approximately the same size. So Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Extreme southern Michigan (metro Detroit and south) most of Missouri and approximately half of Iowa is "lower Midwest" and Wisconsin, Minnesota, the rest of Michigan, and the rest of Iowa is "upper Midwest".
I'm leaving out the Great Plains as I don't really see them as "Midwest" at all, but I would guess that maybe the eastern halves of these states could feel "Midwestern" compared to their western halves. This is just how I view the area, as I'm almost a "Midwesterner" being from Windsor and all
Most Chicagoans I know would classify themselves as "Upper Midwesterners", or at the very least would be offended by being considered "Lower Midwestern". But clearly this is just anecdotal.
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