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Probably Illinois. The people there are at each other's throats. Oddly, Chicagolanders prefer visiting Wisconsin or Michigan/Indiana over Downstate for weekend trips and would only fly to the East or West coasts.
New Yorkers seem to stay amicable with each other. The Upstaters realize that Wall Street "brings home the bacon" that other states wish they could have.
Which is a greater divide: metro New York and Upstate NY, or Chicagoland and Downstate Illinois?
How would you like us to compare them?
In general, I can tell you that the rest of Illinois sees itself as being divided into 3 overarching regions (northern, central, and southern) rather than Chicagoland and downstate.
There's also not necessarily a lot of solidarity among the rest of the state beyond people complaining about Chicago. No other city in the state really has an image that it's been able to project statewide either. That becomes even more evident when you realize the second most culturally important city to the citizens of Illinois after Chicago is St. Louis, MO. The Illinois portion of metro St. Louis, called the Metro East, is the second largest urban area in the state after Chicagoland. Said urban area is roughly 600k to 700k. It's a rather low bar. It doesn't help that 5 of the state's 10 largest cities not named Chicago are still in Chicagoland.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KerrTown
Probably Illinois. The people there are at each other's throats. Oddly, Chicagolanders prefer visiting Wisconsin or Michigan/Indiana over Downstate for weekend trips and would only fly to the East or West coasts.
What's so odd about it? Illinois isn't exactly the most scenic state. It's 75% farmland, in addition to being the second flattest state in the US. There certainly are some stunning and scenic parts of the state, but they're frankly the exception rather than the rule. Additionally, somewhere like the Garden of the Gods is a further drive from Chicago than Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. The scenery in Wisconsin and Michigan is simply closer to Chicago than the furtherest reaches of Illinois. Both states also have lakes, and heading up to a lake town or someone's lake house is a favorite weekend getaway for Chicagoans.
They're both really strong divides--might be like splitting hairs to say precisely which is stronger. There's actually a pretty strong divide between Chicago, downstate IL (which is also divided central and southern), most of Wisconsin, and most of Indiana. There are some things that strongly connect Chicago and N/central IL, like sports teams (although there's some Cubs/Cards split once you get about Springfield), rail lines, expressways, most-used airports, universities, etc.
There are many other strong divides, include Atl and the rest of GA (pretty stark); Portland and outstate OR (pretty stark); Seattle and outstate WA (pretty stark); Twin Cities and outstate MN; metro Boston and the rest of MA, etc.
Last edited by Maintainschaos; 02-16-2017 at 05:17 AM..
Probably Illinois. The people there are at each other's throats. Oddly, Chicagolanders prefer visiting Wisconsin or Michigan/Indiana over Downstate for weekend trips and would only fly to the East or West coasts.
New Yorkers seem to stay amicable with each other. The Upstaters realize that Wall Street "brings home the bacon" that other states wish they could have.
Because there's virtually nothing to visit in downstate IL. Upstate NY is beautiful.
Upstate NY has cities and even rural areas that are left leaning. Also, a lot of people who live in some of the upstate cities are from NYC.
My opinion has always been Upstate, if it was it's own state, would probably swing about 5% more towards the Democrats than it is now. Basically there's a small percentage of people in the state who identify as moderate Republicans solely because the Democratic party is associated with NYC, and they feel that the Republicans look out for Upstate interests in the state. Take NYC away, and that dynamic vanishes.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KerrTown
Probably Illinois. The people there are at each other's throats. Oddly, Chicagolanders prefer visiting Wisconsin or Michigan/Indiana over Downstate for weekend trips and would only fly to the East or West coasts.
New Yorkers seem to stay amicable with each other. The Upstaters realize that Wall Street "brings home the bacon" that other states wish they could have.
As a former NY native, I can say that Upstate gets punished by NYC. Taxes are high but without all the culture and amenities of NYC, so it's a double negative upstate.
Having lived in both places, I'm going to say the Chicagoland-Downstate divide is greater. People in the New York metro area go upstate all the time for leisure purposes. People in Chicagoland never go downstate.
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