User:Notyourbroom/Sandbox/Cultural Identity

Cultural identity
Pittsburgh falls within the borders of Appalachia as defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission, and the city has cultural ties to that region.

While the city's status as both a Rust Belt city and an Appalachian city are largely undisputed, the city's geographic location adds to its cultural ambiguity. Though geographically part of the Northeastern United States, the city is also culturally tied to the Midwestern United States and to the Southern United States—for example, its population includes an unusually high number of country music fans for a northern city. Pittsburgh lies only a few dozen miles from the spot where the physical boundaries of these three major regions of the United States converge (40.6388°N, -80.51899°W) as defined by the United States Census Bureau.

In his 2009 book The Paris of Appalachia, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer Brian O'Neill meditates on this aspect of Pittsburgh's cultural ambiguity. The title of the book is intentionally provocative:"'The Paris of Appalachia' some have called Pittsburgh derisively, because it's still the largest city along this gorgeous mountain chain that needs a better press agent. I've long felt we should embrace that title, though few are with me. Several tried to talk me out of slapping it on the cover, but were we called 'The Paris of the Rockies,' we wouldn't run from it. Sometimes we're so afraid of what others think, we're afraid to say who we are. This city is not Midwestern. It's not East Coast. It's just Pittsburgh, and there's no place like it. That's both its blessing and its curse. :13"

In addition to lacking any clear regional or cultural affiliations within the United States as a whole, Pittsburgh also appears to be a cultural outlier within its own state. The city has more in common culturally and historically with nearby Ohioan cities such as Cleveland & Youngstown and nearby West Virginian cities such as Wheeling & Morgantown—which are geographically classified as being part of the Midwestern United States and the Southern United States, respectively —than it does with other major Pennsylvanian cities such as Philadelphia and Harrisburg, which are unambiguously part of the Northeastern United States. This disparity is due in large part to the myriad topographical, economic, and social factors which have long divided Western Pennsylvania from Eastern Pennsylvania.