Do you Pennsylvanians consider yourselves more like Ohio or Maryland

[Gerania]

Originally Posted by ElijahAstin

By the time you hit South Jersey, you’re well into the Atlantic Coastal Plain, which is very flat. Because so much more of South Jersey was farmland going into the postwar era, you also see conspicuously autocentric infrastructure much closer to the city. I really like Collingswood and the Haddons, though. Cooper River Lake is a great running trail, too.

I do see what you mean, however. While I’ll certainly have a lot more in common with someone from Cherry Hill than Coraopolis, there are a lot of shared experiences we have, as Pennsylvanians, that don’t cross state lines even within the same metropolitan area.

Western Monmouth County with its hills and farms reminds me of PA. Lambertville and New Hope are similar in many ways.

[bradjl2009]

Originally Posted by Katarina Witt

Agreed! I grew up about 10 miles from Ohio, and I consider myself a Pennsylvania native. Ohio has no place in my psyche (not to diss Ohio).

Pittsburgh native and resident and Ohio and WV are never in my thought process. I would imagine though a lot more people in Ohio and WV have Pennsylvania in their though process just because of how rural the areas near this state are, so you will see a lot of plates from those two states at the malls and sporting events.

[ElijahAstin]

Originally Posted by Gerania

Western Monmouth County with its hills and farms reminds me of PA. Lambertville and New Hope are similar in many ways.

The fall line more or less follows Route 1, which is why North Jersey is much hillier than South.

[Gerania]

Originally Posted by ElijahAstin

The fall line more or less follows Route 1, which is why North Jersey is much hillier than South.

Interesting. I've never considered Route 1. The terrain does change south of that old road.

[blauskies]

More like neither of those places, at least from where I'm originally from Central PA on the Eastern edge.

If you live closer to the border, I'm sure you can feel more like it spreads over.

[Duderino]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

Well, if I had to pick a state that Pennsylvania "resembles," I'd pick Maryland over any of the other states that border it, though I think the poster in the original discussion who put New York State at the top has a very good point.

Yes, the historical aspects (ubiquitous colonial-era or early nineteenth century aura and being part of the "Original 13"), topography (99% of the state is either rolling hills or mountains), and built environment (generally very dense cities/urban cores that are very often rowhome-based and where stone and brick dominate), and dense foliage with small plot, generations-old farmland interspersed, makes Pennsylvania aesthetically unequivocally East Coast/Mid-Atlantic, with Maryland or New Jersey serving as the closest analogues.

The conversation as to which state Pennsylvania most closely resembles in modern cultural terms is where this gets much more debatable. This has been debated over many threads, but I think the general consensus is that the highly urbanized Southeastern quadrant of the state (everything east and south of the Allegheny and Pocono ridges) is very firmly aligned with the East Coast/Northeast Corridor, with the rest of the state serving as Interior Northeast/"Rust Belt"/Northern Appalachia.

There's certainly strong arguments that Interior Northeast has some economic commonalities with the Midwest (in particular, the Great Lakes Midwest), but there are still some nuances that would make a typical rural town in Pennsylvania at least a little different than a typical rural town in Ohio.