Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
My maternal grandfather's family, specifically his mother's side, came to Sunderland, Co Durham (where I was born) in the 19th century for the mining. They were from Ireland and originally settled near Wigan, Lancashire, another big coal mining region.
Sunderland had a lot of traditional industries, it was both a major shipbuilding area, as well as having numerous coal mines as part of the vast County Durham coal field.
I do know parts of the area, as some of my family own a farm up in Northumberland.
London - New York City (historic primary cities of each country)
Birmingham - Detroit and surrounds (troubled but culturally distinct big cities of a “midland” region. Known for hard rock music)
Manchester - Chicago (famous sports, music/dance music heritage)
Glasgow - Los Angeles (hard to explain; primary city of culturally distinct sub-unit - Scotland. Rough around the edges. Sprawling. Mix of old and new)
Edinburgh - San Francisco (artsy and historic second cities of distinct sub-unit - Scotland/California)
Leeds - Cleveland (San Diego, in terms of nightlife)
Liverpool - Miami (“second nightlife city” in the UK, distinct foreign influence - Irish/Latin American, art deco port city)
Bristol - if considering the Metropolitan county, Washington, DC, if considering the culture of the city proper, Atlanta
Bath - Charleston
Newcastle - Boston (Georgian architecture; medium vibes for nightlife in historic settings)
Blackpool - vaguely New Orleans-y. More depressed energy, though. There’s no relevant equivalent, tbh
Milton Keynes - Las Vegas, but not (lol). Trying to think of cities that are entirely post-modern in their development, and there aren’t many. Maybe Orlando? Which doesn’t quite qualify either. Maybe a suburban “new town”, like Reston, Virginia
Sheffield - Philadelphia
Doncaster - Part Pittsburgh, part Baltimore
Cambridge is kind of an amalgamation of a place like Charlottesville and Savannah, Oxford kind of like Princeton + college town Massachusetts. York would probably be best compared to Portland, ME and/or Portsmouth, NH. The Cotswolds, maybe ski resort areas like Aspen, Vail, parts of Vermont, or Upstate New York and small town Pennsylvania. Scilly Isles are the Keys. Swansea is kind of like Denver, or maybe Portland, OR. Warwick, maybe Santa Fe.
I think Blackpool would more similar to somewhere like Atlantic City.
I think Brighton would be more similar to San Francisco than Edinburgh.
Sheffield is famous for it's steel industry and is generally wined with Pittsburgh.
Boston is an old town with a strong educational links so would probably have more in common with Edinburgh.
Manchester is probably a similar size and status to Philadelphia.
and I could go on, but wont.
To be honest the cities that generally have the strongest British/Irish influence are in the North East of the US or in parts of Canada.
In terms of warmer parts of the US and cities such as Los Angeles there are probably more similarities with cities in the Mediterranean region than with the UK, and a better comparison would probably be between European and US cities rather than just the UK.
I dont think you can compare any city in the UK to any in the US, they are all different in their own way .
personally I dont see what is so great about any city and I lived in one for 40 years before I escaped for good, the only thing you can compare them to is an ant hill.
The one thing tht can be done is single out the US cities named after UK cities. Often these names were adopted in colonial period.
In New England there re mqny cities nd towns named after their UK counterparts. In Connecticut alone it seems half of the state is named after somewhere in the UK. I’m surprised the state actually has a Native American name insted of named after somewhere in the UK. lol It gives another meaning to New England (vs Old England).
I dont think you can compare any city in the UK to any in the US, they are all different in their own way .
personally I dont see what is so great about any city and I lived in one for 40 years before I escaped for good, the only thing you can compare them to is an ant hill.
Agree. I think it's insane that anyone would even try to compare a city in the UK to the US. Comparing ANY US city to a European city makes little sense especially given most of these European cities are at least a millennium old with their own unique cultures enriched over many centuries. They are a complete different world to the US. There would be no similarities whatsoever with a European city other than the US having some architecture inspired from it but it's overall culture, layout etc is radically different. US cities are more like Australian which are huge sprawling areas that stretch over thousands of square kilometres in total. European cities in comparison are significantly smaller and more densely populated with links right back to the Ancient, Roman or Medieval era
It's clear by some of these posts how few of them have visited each other's country lol
Last edited by Paddy234; Today at 12:45 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
