Nw pa... (Pittsburgh, Erie: shop, vacation, friendly)

[North Beach Person]

Anyone, anywhere moving to a rural area is going to be thought of as an outsider, at least until they prove themselves.

[bethany12]

On the plus side, horrible NW PA winters make the undesirable people move away.

[dblea65]

LOL Bethany... It does do that!!! but not all of them!!!

[ki0eh]

Originally Posted by dblea65

How come there is no forums on the NW part of PA??? I am sure it would be useful to have... To many people move to the area that shouldn't and wouldn't if they could ask questions and get real answers

To move the discussion forward, how would you define the "area"?

Say, Erie County? The entire 814 area code (including Elkland in Tioga County, State College, and Artemas on the Mason-Dixon Line in Bedford County?) Or some level of definition in between?

Originally Posted by North Beach Person

People come and complain about all the things they miss and how much better it is back where they came from.

That is a curious tendency, and the object of some discussion in the NEPA forum where there's a current thread that in so many words says "So why did you move here anyway??"

Originally Posted by scottrpriester

I'm originally from Erie, and have legislated for a NW PA forum too. The cry babies on here that argue about not having a Harrisburg forum get ridiculous; there is at least representation of their general area in the other forums. There is no representation of NW PA whatsoever.

Sometimes it's hard to convey meaning when typing. I think more regional forums, not fewer, would do better to convey information and drive traffic to this site.

But if this is a counter-argument I'm not sure it's fully supported. Maybe easiest to see this on the flip side: Erie is about as close to the the regional forum centers of Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh, as Harrisburg is to those of Allentown (Lehigh Valley), Wilkes-Barre (NEPA), Philadelphia, and Baltimore. So one could say with equal merit that Erie is covered because these other regional centers are. (Notice I said with equal merit.)

By way of comparison, looking at 2008 metropolitan statistical areas population estimate:

It seems the folks promoting a southcentral PA forum on here advocate an amalgam of Harrisburg, York, and Lancaster.

Harrisburg-Carlisle MSA pop: 531,108
Lancaster MSA pop: 502,370
York-Hanover MSA pop: 424,583

(I won't even add Lebanon in too)

Total: 1,458,061

To compare:

Erie MSA pop: 279,175

Source here: http://www.census.gov/popest/metro/t...EST2008-01.xls

Note that I'm not saying a NW PA sub-forum is a bad idea. What I am saying is that selling it knowing that other similar ideas haven't yet flown, might be an uphill battle.

[Krisps]

Erie seems unique and different from the rest of PA and even somewhat from the rest of NW PA because of the lake and how it dominates the lifestyle, weather, topography, landscape, agriculture, etc., also very different politically. Northern PA from the Poconos to Erie county is the wild part of PA dominated by forest, hills, small towns. I'd think a Lake Erie subforum and a PA Wilds subforum would make sense, not that it really matters to me though.

[scottrpriester]

Well, people can lay out all of their worthless statistics, but there is no representation of NW PA whatsover, there needs to be, period.

[ScranBarre]

I was the forum's LARGEST advocate for quite a number of months for an eight-county South Central Pennsylvania sub-forum encompassing the Harrisburg, Lancaster, York, Gettysburg, Carlisle, Chambersburg, and Lebanon areas. This area is growing modestly (somewhat rapidly in the southern reaches as Baltimore's northward sprawl creeps in), and yet even though a good portion of the General PA forum inquiries are directed towards South Central PA, there is still no forum.

I presented my case VERY painstakingly, even going so far as to post population growth trends on a county-by-county basis and to compile a list of pertinent threads, but it was no use.

Scott, would you please give up the sour grapes mentality already? You slammed me mercilessly and pretty rudely during my pleas for a South Central PA sub-forum for no good reason. Why on Earth is Erie County worthy of its own sub-forum when it is mentioned perhaps once per week and has under 300,000 residents whereas South Central PA is mentioned AT LEAST once per day and has well over a million residents?

[YourBoro]

We DEFINITELY need a NWPA forum


I've been lurking and seeing people post new topics all the time about it. Why hasn't this happened yet? What harm could it possibly do?

And why would it be only Erie? NWPA is more than just Erie (thank God)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Pennsylvania

The Northwest Region is an area ofPennsylvania containing Butler, Clarion, Crawford, Erie, Forest, Lawrence, Mercer, Venango, and Warren counties. The population of the region is 908,367.

Look at the Ohio forum:

Dayton has it's own section.
"The population was 166,179 at the 2000 census"

908,367 Definitely beats out Dayton, Akron and Canton.


Not that population means anything.

[scottrpriester]

Originally Posted by YourBoro

We DEFINITELY need a NWPA forum


I've been lurking and seeing people post new topics all the time about it. Why hasn't this happened yet? What harm could it possibly do?

And why would it be only Erie? NWPA is more than just Erie (thank God)

Exactly.

[YourBoro]

It seems absolutely absurd, as city-data gives places like "ocala, FL" their own sub-forum, even though they have only 50,000 residents, and Florida has TEN total sub-forums.