Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hydraulix989 | Hacker News Reader

Great article, except Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is not midwest, it's East Coast. (I'm from Pittsburgh, born and raised)

I was also raised in Pittsburgh. Having lived in Ohio and Michigan later in life with vacations to the coastal cities on the east, Pittsburgh feels much more midwestern than east coast to me.

Boston, Philadelphia, NY, or NJ, the actual near-coastal cities, felt as "foreign" as when I moved to CA. (not sure if foreign is a good word, I don't mean it to be negative as I loved my move to CA)

I'm sure you are technically correct based on some google map searches, but I had never thought of Pittsburgh as east coast growing up or visiting later in life for Steeler games

>I was also raised in Pittsburgh

Same here, but I never really knew what region to give us. Too East Coast to be Midwest, too Appalachian to be East Coast, too Midwest to be Appalachian.

I always just think of us as being a bit region-less, which I think suits the city and its people just fine.

You are not alone in that opinion: http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/brian-oneill/2011/01/31/...

So do you feel Pittsburgh is more similar to New York than Chicago? I've always felt that PGH seemed more culturally similar to the great lakes cities (it is traditionally part of the Great Lakes Megalopolis[1]) than to the east coast corridor, but I'm a native of none of those places.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Megalopolis

Someone who has lived in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, now Chicago here. I think Pittsburgh is much more similar culturally to Chicago than NYC. When I saw the post lump Pittsburgh in the Midwest, I had a feeling the "But wait, Pittsburgh is in Appalachia" comment was coming, but I think it made sense to put in in.

If a ~7 hour drive from the beach is considered "East Coast" then Vegas is prime waterfront real estate.

I think the parent meant "east coast region". 7 hr drive to the beach sounds lovely compared to my 12-14 hours.

Except I never heard anyone call Vegas midwest.

Why would you? The midwest isn't anywhere near there - it doesn't extend much (if at all) into the Western half of the US.

Do you often hear people call Vegas "the West Coast"?

"Midwest" can mean anything from Pennsylvania to Kansas. It can mean the Old Northwest (the original "the West") [0], or it can mean "just west of the Mississippi River". As Humpty-Dumpty says, it's just a question of who is to be master.

Pennsylvania is a Mid-Atlantic state, but Pittsburgh is where the Ohio River starts.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territory

> the Old Northwest

As an Oregonian, I always scratched my head when seeing that "Northwestern University" was in Illinois until I realized that at one point, that was the "north west".

Pittsburgh is somehow less East Coast than is Philadelphia. Philly is an original-13-colonies port town; Pittsburg was (for them ) way west .

Historically (IMO) , "Midwestern" in the US refers to when a city was settled - if it was ostensibly a then-Western fort settlement, it'll be closer to being Midwestern. So it has at least something more in common with say, Cincinnati than with Philly.

Likewise, Roanoake, Va is pretty midwestern while Norfolk is very East Coast.

I think the areas between the Mississippi River and Appalachian system are a bit nebulous as to where they fit in. The Rust Belt has generally been considered Midwestern, but not Kentucky (even though settlement of both regions happened at roughly the same time. Tennessee and Arkansas generally get lumped in with the South. Moving west, Oklahoma is another toss-up, and Texas is plopped across three regional boundaries (South, Midwest, and Southwest).

Not just the Appalachians; any natural barrier between the coast/Piedmont and the place under test will work. But IMO, it's mostly about the settlement pattern in play.

I've found Colin Woodard's "American Nations" to be a pretty good guide. I think this map comes from that:

http://static.businessinsider.com/image/55b273a2371d2211008b...

Pittsburgh is in the Rust Belt, which often gets lumped in with the midwest. It has more in common with Buffalo and Cleveland, or even Milwaukee, than NYC or Chicago, although Pittsburgh is economically stronger than most of its Rust Belt brethren. No one from the East Coast considers Pittsburgh part of the coast - Philadelphia is the East Coast city in PA. East Coasters see Pittsburgh as Cleveland in the universe where Spock has a beard. [I really like Pittsburgh and other Rust Belt cities]

Pittsburgh is at the very fringe edge of the so-called "Rust Belt" (I hate that word, btw -- it's quite a pejorative, much like "San Fran").

http://www.newgeography.com/files/imagecache/Chart_Story_Ins...

^ Not sure why this got downvoted. I'm pretty sure that if you told someone who lived in a rural area that they lived "out in the boonies" or that they were "rednecks," they would also take offense.

Please take some perspective: People on here are literally calling my beloved hometown and place of birth a "Rust Belt."

Even though I'm in Silicon Valley now, the vast majority of my friends and family still live back home.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com