Quote:
Originally Posted by jtown,man
Everything is pretty much arbitrary within most countries then. I mean, using culture to create states, the US would have what...5 states?
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Perhaps.
My point, which should have currency on this forum of all places, is that cities (and their rural hinterlands) are the proper unit for most purposes, particularly cultural and economic.
Aside from Texas, which has a state identity to a weird degree for various reasons, cities are more meaningful than states, and so yes having state boundaries which essentially create a political boundary between a city and its hinterland is an odd thing.
It’s nothing to do with being “in the middle”, or for example Paris or London not being in the geographic center of France or England. But they aren’t cut off from their outskirts like many, many American cities.
The difference between the Americas (and particularly the US) and the Old World, of course, is that the political boundaries were formed before the cities developed rather than the other way around.