Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
^ Pittsburgh is a great city, with lots of good quality neighborhood urbanism, but I don't think you'll find many folks around here that would place it in the "Midwest" camp.
And native Pittsburghers themselves are stridently adamant in their belief that their city is "NOT MIDWEST!!!!!!!"
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When I moved to Pittsburgh 16 years ago, I naively (as someone from the Northeast Corridor) thought of it as being midwestern. I was quickly corrected by locals, and now defend its non-midwesternness.
I think the bug that people have regarding this is due to the sports rivalry with Cleveland. People here have no issue if you call Pittsburgh Appalachian, for example, so it's not as if they are tied to a Northeastern identity.
But another contributing factor is it doesn't really share a lot of cultural commonalities with nearby parts of the Midwest. Cleveland may only be a two hour drive away, but it's a classic Great Lakes city, with nasal accents, wood-framed detached houses, wide streets, and a monumental downtown. None of this is similar to Pittsburgh at all. Pittsburgh does have cultural commonalities with the Lower Midwest, but the nearest major city with some commonalities is Cincinnati, and that's on the opposite side of Ohio.