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Would you consider a modern building built back in 1990’s modern by today’s standards? No. Same principle applies...
Was Baltimore considered southern during the 19th century when it was the southern most major city on the Eastern seaboard and DC was still a town? Sure... Seeing its not the 19th century and we are currently in 2021 times and definitions have moved.
Baltimore is strengthening its relationship with every city on the eastern seaboard, not just cities in the south.
That was a horrible analogy
Was Baltimore a northeastern city in a southern state?
Why can't Philly's classification change then, its 2021 right? You're just throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks at this point. Baltimore is joined at the hip with DC (general consensus), which also ties it to Virginia. Maryland is culturally, demographically, historically, and similarly, strong country run state government just like Virginia, nothing like PA, yet it is a northeastern state? How does that make any sense? You haven't articulated even a half way decent reason for not considering Baltimore a southern city anymore other than it's 2021. Let's make NYC a southern city, and make Atlanta a Northeastern state if we're going by your logic.
Right, and Baltimore is Culturally & economically, Historically, demographically in line with DC, Richmond, Hampton Roads than it is to NYC and Boston. If Baltimore isn't economically & structurally similar to Charlotte and Atlanta, then, by your logic, Baltimore was never southern to begin with. However, everybody says that it WAS southern at one point. So how did Baltimore become Northeastern if it's further strengthening it's relationship with other cities in the south (DC, Richmond..etc)
You're all contradicting yourselves by debating me on this.
I see your sentiment in this. I do think that Baltimore is more like the areas in close proximity. Hampton Roads used to look very Northeastern at one point and I think your point would have had more punch to it if Hampton Roads retained its original look (P. O. R. reasons).
Once you leave VA, that is where Baltimore's Southern similarities drop of a cliff quickly. B More is Mid-Atlantic second definition. There's a Southerness too it in a VA type of way though.
The idea that regions and neighborhoods have "official" boundaries is an odd trait of fan boards like this.
This site is called City-Data.com.
Most agencies and organizations that collect data on places draw boundaries or establish geographic criteria to determine the territory from which they will collect the data. Usually, the boundaries are politically based to a great degree — that is, they don't split jurisdictions in two (though they will divide higher-level jurisdictions such as the state or the nation).
In the US, that agency is the Office of Management and Budget, and the criteria they use to determine the areas from which they will draw data on a place is based on commuting patterns and counties (except in New England, where it's based on cities and towns). These are the "core-based statistical areas" — metropolitan, micropolitan, consolidated (multiple metro/micropolitan areas with significant cross-commuting among them).
It's not just some fanboy fantasy. These are "official" boundaries in that a government agency sets them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KodeBlue
You are aware that Baltimore was a larger city than Philly at one point, right? Did Philly resemble the larger Baltimore at that point?
This has always been my thing: everything that people say makes Baltimore northern and also be stated as the south having those traits. Also, you haven't been able to tell me when and how Baltimore became part of the northeast. Furthermore, you and everybody on City Data attached Baltimore to a another to its south.
I don't care what everybody thinks. It means that nobody knows what they're talking about.
Baltimore was larger than Philadelphia from sometime around 1800 until 1854, when the city of Philadelphia and the 30-odd other boroughs, townships and districts of Philadelphia County were combined into a single entity.
The city of Philadelphia probably did resemble the core of the city of Baltimore at the time.
As for Philadelphia being "nearly southern," it's true that nobody considers it or Pennsylvania Southern, but gthe University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine trained the bulk of the South's doctors prior to the Civil War, and the abolitionists here faced stiff opposition too, as the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall one week after it opened evidenced.
BTW, remember, I grew up in a border state, one that also saw its share of conflict both in the runup to and during the Civil War, mostly in the area around the city where I was born and raised. You can find plenty of people in the Kansas City area who speak with what I would call Appalachian or "hillbillly" accents, and many in the region still resent the Union general's order that cleared the surrounding countryside of its Confederate sympathizers and then burned their houses to the ground (look up "burnt district," "border war," "bushwhackers" and "Quantrill" sometime). Missouri was also a slave state, and its southeast quarter is definitely Southern culturally. But I bristle when anyone calls the entire state Southern — it's a Midwestern state, and the residents of neither Kansas City nor St. Louis would tell you they're Southerners. St. Louis is also heavily industrial and gives off very little in the way of Southern ambiance. No one in St. Louis I know of considers that city Southern, even with its ties to the South via the Mississippi River trade artery.
Several people here have suggested St. Louis as the city most closely resembling Baltimore, and I think a strong case could be made for that. So where were we on this "Baltimore's Southern and that's that" thing? I think I'd class it as a "border" metropolis. (BTW, what were those other Southern industrial cities? The only one I can think of is "the Pittsburgh of the South," and the steelmaking center of Birmingham wasn't founded until after the Civil War.)
Maryland is pretty different from Virginia (south of Rappahannock) today.
Yeah, there is some comparison in their cities but the real difference -- and the thing that makes Maryland less southern -- is the lack of a rural countryside.
25 minutes outside of Richmond and you are in the southern country where the most southern accents are heard (more so than Raleigh-Durham in fact). The same is not true of Baltimore, with it's highly urbanized and far reaching suburbs. Only northern Baltimore county is somewhat country, but it is more northern and similar to PA than VA over there, given the short distance to the PA line.
Although I agree Maryland shouldn't be associated with Northeast... more akin to Delaware, Pennsylvania, Northern Virginia and West Virginia.
If Baltimore was once considered a southern city, when and how did it become northeastern?
Sometime between the end of the Civil War and WWII. This is when transportation, industrial, and population settlement patterns underwent drastic changes and paved the way for our megapolitan/metropolitan-driven economies today.
Some time ago, I came across a publication (pdf) that details the history of regional classifications of states by the Census Bureau. It's a really good read and it details how economic landscapes based on physical geography in the mid-19th century (when transportation was primarily waterborne) provided the basis for the regions as they exist today. Page 18 outlines an attempt to revisit the regional classification scheme after the 1950 Census which is quite informative. Among a few of the proposed changes was the reassignment of DC, MD, and DE to the Mid-Atlantic subregion of the Northeast. Eventually no revisions occurred because statisticians and other data users considered it too much of a hassle to switch from the system that had already been in use for several decades, but the revised classifications were justified according to the criteria established from the start.
(BTW, what were those other Southern industrial cities? The only one I can think of is "the Pittsburgh of the South," and the steelmaking center of Birmingham wasn't founded until after the Civil War.)
Sometime between the end of the Civil War and WWII. This is when transportation, industrial, and population settlement patterns underwent drastic changes and paved the way for our megapolitan/metropolitan-driven economies today.
Some time ago, I came across a publication (pdf) that details the history of regional classifications of states by the Census Bureau. It's a really good read and it details how economic landscapes based on physical geography in the mid-19th century (when transportation was primarily waterborne) provided the basis for the regions as they exist today. Page 18 outlines an attempt to revisit the regional classification scheme after the 1950 Census which is quite informative. Among a few of the proposed changes was the reassignment of DC, MD, and DE to the Mid-Atlantic subregion of the Northeast. Eventually no revisions occurred because statisticians and other data users considered it too much of a hassle to switch from the system that had already been in use for several decades, but the revised classifications were justified according to the criteria established from the start.
"Because we've always done it that way." Ugh. Great logical reasoning there, census statisticians.
How it is that anyone can doubt that Maryland is Mid-Atlantic is beyond me. But that's an argument for a different thread.
It appears that according to that PDF, MD was placed in the Mid-Atlantic division for the 1850 and 1860 Censuses before reverting back in 1870 to the South, which I find odd since Baltimore/MD didn't nearly suffer the costs of the war has harshly as its southern neighbors, including bombed out Richmond. Jim Crow wasn't even yet a big deal until after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, and Baltimore came out of the war bigger and better than ever, and had a big boom of immigration, second only to NYC at its peak. Though you could blame the British Empire for MD's regional fate based on those pre-USA groupings. Interestingly, the colonial grouping places North Carolina as Lower South instead of Upper South like its more commonly referred to nowadays, and keep in mind that from 1790 to 1840, there were no regional classifications, just states listed alphabetically.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bus man
"Because we've always done it that way." Ugh. Great logical reasoning there, census statisticians.
How it is that anyone can doubt that Maryland is Mid-Atlantic is beyond me. But that's an argument for a different thread.
Quite honestly I don't think any state in the US in modern times is more of the Mid Atlantic than Maryland. It is the epicenter period. NY and PA are not "more" mid Atlantic as a state than Maryland is, they are pure "Northern" while MD is the transition zone to the North, while VA also partially mid-Atlantic, is the transition zone to the South. PA isn't even on the Atlantic nor the Bay. IMO the epitome of a mid Atlantic state would be one that borders North/South while on the ocean, and Maryland is the only state in the US that does this...Well I guess Delaware is the other.
Simply go to the google search bar, type in "Mid Atlantic" then next put any letter from A-Z as the beginning of the next word. Almost every business, or company named "mid atlantic blank" that pops up, has an address in either Maryland or Virginia somewhere. It's silly to debate this.
Last edited by the resident09; 03-29-2021 at 02:05 PM..
Quite honestly I don't think any state in the US in modern times is more of the Mid Atlantic than Maryland. It is the epicenter period. NY and PA are not "more" mid Atlantic as a state than Maryland is, they are pure "Northern" while MD is the transition zone to the North. PA isn't even on the Atlantic nor the Bay. IMO the epitome of a mid Atlantic state would be one that borders North/South while on the ocean, and Maryland is the only state in the US that does this...Well I guess Delaware is the other.
Simply go to the google search bar, type in "Mid Atlantic" then next put any letter from A-Z as the beginning of the next word. Almost every business, or company named "mid atlantic blank" that pops up, has an address in either Maryland or Virginia somewhere. It's silly to debate this.
Pretty much. The historical Middle Atlantic states don't really claim that designation the way Maryland and VA rep it. They are more the contemporary Mid-Atlantic. Someone from New England would say one thing about MD while someone from the non transient Lower South will say something else. It's interesting but to discuss the regional intricacies of MD but it's just a blend of VA and PA for the most part with some WV thrown in. The only argument comes when a regional influence is discounted.
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