Give me a map of the midwest how you imagine it, and don't just use state lines, show me how you think the cultural area of the midwest actually exists in the US
Blue dots: cities that come to mind if I'm trying to name a Midwestern city to explain the Midwest to someone
Green dots: other cities among the 120 most populous cities in the US which feel probably Midwestern to me
Orange shaded region: Midwest core
Purple shaded region: yeah sure probably Midwestern but it kind of depends on context (Food? Demographics? Religion? Politics? Music? Natural environment/climate?)
Black dotted line: approximate "upper Midwest" versus "lower Midwest" boundary
Red line: approximate "the South" boundary- yes I guess I believe the South and the Midwest aren't mutually exclusive
Pink circled region: the Great Plains- a unified region which should be included or excluded from the Midwest as a package deal. I typically include it but I don't feel strongly about whether it would be better to consider it a separate but related region. However, if someone thinks the only thing west of the Midwest is The West, then the Great Plains should be in the Midwest, because they are definitely NOT the West.
I thought about some of the qualities people might think about the Midwest and looked up maps for them. Here they are, with the Midwest indicated by that quality circled. Note I am not making claims about whether any of these qualities are good or bad, they're just things that get associated with midwesternness.
"the Midwest is flat"
"the Midwest is not diverse"
"the Midwest was a hub for the Great Migration"
"the Midwest is union states that were not the original colonies or the far west"
"the Midwest has a significant mainline protestant population" (pink ABCUSA, orange ELCA, and green UMC on this map)
"the Midwest is farmland"
"the Midwest has wet summers and dry winters"
"people in the Midwest are of primarily German, Scandinavian, and Native American ancestry"
There are lots of these kinds of things that aren't occurring to me at the moment. But just for fun let's combine these ones into a map! There's a transparent purple layer for each of the previous maps, and a black outline for places that fall into at least 5 of the 8 regions.
Maybe this is the Midwest? Probably better than my first reblog on instinct alone.
