How does your city's suburbs divide into regions? (apartments, new house)

[edsg25]

What are the geographic areas that make up your city's suburban area. What distinguishing characteristics do these areas have?

For example:

• New York: Long Island, Westchester, New Jersey

• Chicago: North Shore, North Suburbs, Northwest suburbs, West suburbs, Fox Valley, Southwest suburbs, South suburbs, NW IN

• San Francisco (for this...not so much suburbs but Bay Area regions): The Peninsula, Silicon Valley/San Jose, Oakland and the East Bay, Marin, Wine Country

[Vegabern]

Milwaukee:

North Shore
Western burbs
Waukesha
Lake Country
South Milwaukee
and I don't know what you call the random suburbs north of town like Menominee Falls and Germantown.

[cornsnicker3]

Duluth is split into neighborhoods which are sort of like suburbs given how spread out the city is:

-Central Hillside: Most dramatic changes in elevation, older house, and poor. Borders UMD and St Scholastica to its northeast.

-Lincoln Park: Duluth's second downtown with trendy breweries, furniture stores, and thrift shops. Lower middle class.

-West Duluth (pretty much everything west* of US-53): Duluth's 3rd downtown off of Central Avenue (ironically not central), Older houses with few stores, Duluth Grill, Spirit Mountain, Blue collar flavor, The Zoo. Poor to Lower Middle class

-Congdon Park, Hunter's Park, Chester Park, Kenwood, and Woodland: Technically separate neighborhoods, but with practically the same flavor. Large Victorian-esque houses. Borders UMD and St. Scholastica to its northwest. Often considered the old money part of Duluth. Middle class to Upper clas

-Lester Park/Lakeside: Flatter than most of Duluth, VERY family oriented, safe, great parks. FAR from downtown. Middle class to upper middle class.

-Piedmont, Miller Hill, and Hermantown: Piedmont is essentially an extension of Lincoln Park into the Hills going towards the Mall on US-53. Miller Hill Mall is where people do 95% of their shopping. Hermantown is a separate city where people build the new houses. Pricier and high taxes, but supposedly better everything. Middle class to upper middle class

*Due to the north shore angle, west really means southwest and east really means northeast

The flavor of each neighborhood makes the city very interesting for sure.

[kidphilly]

For Philly I would say as follows


Main Line (Main Line suburbs with parts in Montco, Delaware, and eastern Chester counties)
S Jersey (yep you guessed it S Jersey burbs across the river)
Northern burbs - Mostly Bucks county has a little different feel and little more New York exposure
Western Burbs - Chester and Montco
Delaware County - Sort of its own thing; most of Delaware county sans the Main line parts
Delware State burbs - Includes Wilmongton and parts around it, maybe a little of the Brandywine valley in Chester County and also maybe a little bit of Cecil county MD

[btownboss4]

Boston has North Shore, South Shore, Merrimack Valley, NH Seacoast,Metrowest. The 95 corridor and between 93, 128 and route 2 is kind of a no mans land


Buffalo is North Towns and South Towns, Rochester and Cleveland have East and West sides.

[the topper]

Originally Posted by edsg25

What are the geographic areas that make up your city's suburban area. What distinguishing characteristics do these areas have?

For example:

• New York: Long Island, Westchester, New Jersey

• Chicago: North Shore, North Suburbs, Northwest suburbs, West suburbs, Fox Valley, Southwest suburbs, South suburbs, NW IN

• San Francisco (for this...not so much suburbs but Bay Area regions): The Peninsula, Silicon Valley/San Jose, Oakland and the East Bay, Marin, Wine Country

Correction: SJ is not a suburb of any municipality just like Chicago not being a suburb of Milwaukee

[STLgasm]

St. Louis:

North County
West County
South County
Metro East/East Side (IL)
St. Charles County
Jefferson County ("Jeffco")

[TheTimidBlueBars]

Chicagoan here, and here's how I perceive the characteristics of the regions you listed:

- North Shore: educated, rich, more progressive (as opposed to union-Democrat), whites are mostly Anglo-Saxon

- (Inner ring) west and north suburbs: large black and Hispanic communities but very racially balkanized (besides OP/FP), ranges from working-class (Maywood, Bellwood) to affluent (OP/RF, La Grange, Western Springs), most densely populated region outside the city (street grid with houses and apartments on small lots, few to no subdivisions), left-leaning

- Lake County/NW Cook County (north/NW suburbs): extravagant WASP wealth dotted by some more working-class white/Hispanic towns (Waukegan, the Round Lakes, etc.) and, at its northern fringes, some borderline-rural communities (Fox Lake, Antioch) that may not identify much with Chicagoland, leans somewhat liberal

- McHenry County (NW suburbs): a similar dynamic, but less of the WASP wealth and more of the rural parts, somewhat conservative

- DuPage County (west suburbs): also very WASP and wealthy, traditionally religious-right (cf. Wheaton College) but now moving leftward as more educated lakefront Chicagoans have moved in, contains a lot of corporate headquarters (clustered in the Itasca/Schaumburg area and Oak Brook) as well as numerous malls and shopping centers

- Fox Valley: more visibly Rust Belt (very old buildings, many in states of decay, traditional street grids), large Hispanic community that coexists peacefully with whites

- SW suburbs: more conservative (but still only moderate overall), mostly white-ethnic, more insular

- south suburbs: economically depressed, large black population (and growing, as blacks flee the city's South Side), currently undergoing white flight

- NW Indiana - industrial, lots of ex-Illinois-side Chicagoland natives who fled across the border for a lower cost of living, more conservative, starkly divided between violent towns (Gary, E. Chicago, parts of Hammond) and safe, quiet ones that maintain a rural character

[Vegabern]

Originally Posted by the topper

Correction: SJ is not a suburb of any municipality just like Chicago not being a suburb of Milwaukee

Which is probably why he said this "(for this...not so much suburbs but Bay Area regions)". And to be fair, there may come a day Milwaukee becomes a Chicago suburb. But never the other way around.

[manitopiaaa]

Washington-Baltimore CSA:

Washington MSA:
(1) The City or D.C. = District of Columbia


(2) Maryland = The MSA in Maryland. It is subdivided as follows:

(2A) Maryland's DC suburbs = Calvert, Charles, Frederick, Prince George's

(2B) The Baltimore suburbs/DC's Maryland exurbs = Anne Arundel, Howard, Saint Mary's


(3) Nova = The MSA in Virginia. It is subdivided as follows:

(3A) Urban or Suburban Nova/Inner Nova/Core Nova = Alexandria city, Arlington, Fairfax, Fairfax city, Falls Church city, Loudoun, Manassas city, Manassas Park city, Prince William County

(3B) Exurban Nova/Outer Nova: Clarke, Culpeper, Fauquier, Frederick, Fredericksburg city, King George, Madison, Orange, Rappahannock, Spotsylvania, Stafford, Warren, Winchester city

(4) West Virginia: The MSA in West Virginia

Of course the inner DC suburbs are all oriented based on county, You either say you live in "Maryland" or "Virginia" or specify the county: "I live in Fairfax County" or "I'm in Prince George's"

So the first division is State/District: VA/MD/DC
The second division is Distance: Inner suburbs vs. exurbs
The third division is County.

Those who live in inner suburbs typically just say the county. Those who live in the exurbs typically say "I live in the exurbs" or "I'm about 2 hours from the city" since no one knows where Rappahannock County is.

There are also cultural divides. Black Washington, unlike Black D.C., can mean D.C. east of the Anacostia + Prince George's + parts of Charles.

The DC diamond is Alexandria + Arlington + D.C.