Assistance in US geography

[glorff]

Most Texans don't think about a lot of regions, just TEXAS or the gray line on the horizon. 24 is governmental because we think of regions that aren't not either map and different boundaries than the Wiki map.

Just a really big place, especially from a European point of view.

[sensei]

Most Texans don't think about a lot of regions, just TEXAS or the gray line on the horizon. 24 is governmental because we think of regions that aren't not either map and different boundaries than the Wiki map.

True: and there are even boundaries that are felt on the Delmarva but aren't represented on the map. Where I live, the local "region" actually slops over the nearby state line. And at election time, there's always a strong pull between an "Eastern Shore" candidate and a "Western Shore" candidate who comes from one of the counties in our congressional district the other side of the Chesapeake Bay. The two areas have strongly divergent politics and interests, and so the election is always an interesting one.

But as I understand iceman needs to have some set of divisions that has some official sanction, and this set of county lists, even if it's different from what locals "feel," might be useful for census/demographic purposes.

[iceman57]

Just a really big place, especially from a European point of view.

Exactly as big as my country
As I just finished California, it appears that this was a "north" and "south" part wih an attachment of Californian o use the term "Socal" while I didn't notice existance of a "Nocal". I just figured that this may be the same wih Texas, but 24 regions is a bit big. I better have to directly work on county range.

But as I understand iceman needs to have some set of divisions that has some official sanction, and this set of county lists, even if it's different from what locals "feel," might be useful for census/demographic purposes.

Yup, hard to figure 10000 miles away, years from my last trip in the US.
Next states that I will monitor are Florida and New York, but as I'm still filtering data (with less entries), I don't think I may reach a county range detail level.

[zerospace]

The abbreviated term for Northern California is "NorCal" for some, though I rarely ever hear anyone use it. "SoCal" is simply an abbreviated way of saying "Southern California", nothing more.

[graymouser]

Like Zerospace said SoCal is just an abbreviation for Southern California.

Southern California is basically anything south of the Tehachapi Mountains. It's a natural boundary, and there are only a few roads that connect the Southern part to the rest of the state; mainly routes 101, 99, and 5 (aka The Grapevine).

The rest of California is often called Northern California, but many people will separate out another large sub-region; the Central Valley (aka The Valley). The Central Valley compromises most of the central part of California and is predominantly agricultural. It is surrounded by a ring of mountains on 3 sides and the coast (including The Big Sur) on the west side. The coast and the mountains also work as a kind of natural boundary.

These regions tend to separated out a lot because the problems and concerns of each region (urban vs agricultural) are quite different.

[glorff]

Texas is the size of France AND mainland Italy

[iceman57]

Texas is the size of France AND mainland Italy

Dear Glorff, sincere apologies if I damaged anyone from Texas, 10000 miles away with my froggy oriented geography

Thanks to the others members for the detail about California regions, next monitored area is Florida. Fact (corrected now) is that on Texas due to its size able to cover several countries in Europe, to not announce that held an exhibition need to be France or Italy (which in my country will sound radically different), I require to be the more accurate that I can about America in several states.
Distance in northern America are bigger than my local habits, i.e. I remember once in Athens GA when pals told me we "go to meet an uncle, quite close", we driven 3 hours while in my mind "close" means less than 30 minutes.

Consequently I need (if monitored data are substantially enough) to reach the county level of accuracy.

[iceman57]

Florida State and New York State monitoring done.
Any specific regions attached to those States ?

[glorff]

Can I ask what you are monitoring?

I am just trying to whap my mind around how to help.

[dude_moose]

New York has a bunch of regions, and they vary depending on who you ask... I just wanted to stress that these regions, as everyone has been saying, aren't defined by the government (US or State). In most cases, the regions overlap (for example, in NYS, the Finger Lakes, Western NY, and Southern Tier seem to overlap, depending on which map you look at).

Here are some different ways to chop up NY:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... egions.png
http://www.health.state.ny.us/diseases/ ... eports.htm
http://www.nyeducationjobs.com/Informat ... rk_map.htm
http://visitnewyorkstate.net/regions/

[iceman57]

Can I ask what you are monitoring?
I am just trying to whap my mind around how to help.

Sure, global collection map on animation art for thesis release purpose.

Accordingly to several papers I readed in The Economist, USA drives the animation market, but USA is a so big country that this is hard to figure from Europe the East, the West, the North and the South. Consequently after having splitted the country to states, on some states I require to go to a more accurate level of detail (state / region / county). As I'm a bit rusted with US geography, particularly regions I never went too, I simply try to get some assistance from local citizens.

As you wrote up Texas is a big area, as large as two European countries, consequently I need to reach a level of detail that is almost similar to the districts/regions we have in European mind. To make the data and maps more understandable by local people.

i.e. If I say "Texas area is a good place for opportunities", people in Europe with European geography figure out what is Texas but only on a drawing map will say "ok", while US people will say "hey wait, it's like saying France and Italy, this is definitively too big" and then European people will turn their mind. So I have to create something more local like "this town or district area is a good place for oppportunities" which will be consider as county in US will fit a region in Europe, so this scale is in my opinion accurate enough to have a common satisfying level of accuracy.

[iceman57]

Here are some different ways to chop up NY:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... egions.png
http://www.health.state.ny.us/diseases/ ... eports.htm
http://www.nyeducationjobs.com/Informat ... rk_map.htm
http://visitnewyorkstate.net/regions/

Amazing, why do not federal administration set something more general for all states ? In fact any map maker can consider that some counties are part or not from a NY region ?

[glorff]

In this country most data is done in SMSA's (Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area) This is an area that supports a major city or a pair or group of cities that function as an entity. This information includes the city itself and all the surrounding cities/ town as well as the counties that economically feed off of them. These SMSA's cover over 90% of the US population, so it gives you a pretty good picture of what is going on here.

I hope that this will make it easier to figure us out.

[Killua]

My apologies if you already answered this in a previous thread, but what university are you doing your thesis at?

[iceman57]

In this country most data is done in SMSA's (Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area) This is an area that supports a major city or a pair or group of cities that function as an entity. This information includes the city itself and all the surrounding cities/ town as well as the counties that economically feed off of them. These SMSA's cover over 90% of the US population, so it gives you a pretty good picture of what is going on here.

We have a similar size framework but the SMSA is centralised in the country main city, of course the size is smaller and easier to monitorate in Europe.
If I understand well your note, the association of Dallas & Fort Worth called "Metroplex" is an SMSA.

My apologies if you already answered this in a previous thread, but what university are you doing your thesis at?

Apologies ?! Hell no

No problem at all (I don't think I gave such level of detail earlier).
University name is ESSEC (http://www.essec.edu/), formaly known as one of the most famous business school in my country and ranked #7 by the Wall Street Journal for its MBA program.
I am studying there general business management and thesis theme I choosen is "Animation art market applied to individuals and to art auctions", sounded a bit goof to the audience more trained with bank, insurance and other classic (but boring and repetitive) themes.
Fortunally the audience liked a lot during the initial sessions the work I made on auctions study, especially when I used example from the mid-90s ( people eyes always blink when you say $50,000 art, who knows why ).
This university work itself is a personnal conversion from automotive expertising due to automotive industry crisis to a more generic business. I follow there the adult class in a specialised program adapted for people having a professionnal life and not able to be full time in the university campus.
Automotive universe personnal background is useful for me to make a comparative study between Japan automotive industry organisation (Toyota...) and Japanese animation industry (Toei...). Allows to have the rigor of a major centannial industry that I can reapply on a more "childish" universe but with a strong industrial background laborwork.

Coming back on geography, well I'm simply setting several maps for my Powerpoint presentations because a picture can transmit even more information than pages of ugly raw data or even Excel graphics.
Same is applied to France as being a kind of "test bench" for several anime, art auction is important there (of course not as in America nor UK) and the local fashion for japanese art brings us back to 1880 and the impressionnist painters. So I cross geography (thanks to google), demography (thanks to census), history (thanks to wikipedia), and of course art itself (conservators, museums...) to get valid data in order to build the document. Due to the USA mastering animation market, I'm of course already in touch with a Californian translator in order to publish this work in English language.

Fact is that I never ever thought that Texas with my European "Malboro" tobacco adds and Dallas TV series cliche of JR, was so prohiminent in animation art. Some states were easy to identify due to local animation history but this Texas one is a really good surprise that I need to drastically analyse and that will certainly rock the audience
I never imagined a minute that Fort Worth, mothertown of Larry Hagman would be quoted in thesis work