Archive 1Archive 2

Definition

"There is no in whether or not a place is "upstate", as well as elevation and being away from sea level (hence the prefix "up", meaning both to the north and having a greater altitude). "

What? It would appear that there are some words missing from this sentence. It would be great if this could be fixed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.51.184.48 (talk) 13:37, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

North of the Erie Canal

Since the Erie canal is a major geographical landmark which runs horizontally across New York state, it would be better to denote anything above it as upstate. That is, anything above Buffalo to anything above Syracuse. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.138.161.14 (talk) 18:27, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

What a piece of crap.

This article has a lot of potential, but it's basically a disputed, unsourced cesspool of WikiLinks and "it may be this, but it's probably that" statements.

When I finish reviewing a GA nomination I'm going to rip this article to shreds and turn it into something whimsical and informative without all of the filler and contradictory statements that, while needed, aren't presented the way they should be. Stay tuned. Buffaboy talk 04:48, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

If you take that approach, you're liable to get reverted or start disputes. It's not at all the job of Wikipedia articles to be "whimsical". Please see WP:TONE and WP:RELEVANCE.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  00:40, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
"Whimiscal" wasn't a good word to use. Slow, steady and constructive edits will help the article. It does have some good content, but the structure isn't great. Buffaboy talk 05:16, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

RfC: How should this article "define" Upstate New York?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


I would like to work on this article, making it similar to the upper 2/3s of Northern California. Since Upstate New York is an often disputed term, how should it be defined with respect to WP:NPOV? Buffaboy talk 05:00, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Whatever reliable sources say is the best option. Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 00:12, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
From 1992 Trace substances in environmental health, vol. 25, p.278: "Upstate New York includes all counties and townships outside of New York City." That was ever my own understanding, even though I lived on Long Island for two years and never considered it part of "Upstate". "Upstate" meant all of "continental" New York. But I am a sample of one. KDS4444Talk 05:25, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Also found this: "Upstate New York includes all of New York State with the exception of the New York Metropolitan area, consisting of New York City, Long Island, and Rockland, and Westchester counties." So I guess I was right after all in my sentiment. KDS4444Talk 05:29, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
It's probable that exact definitions conflict; the term probably means subtly different things in different regulatory (and other) contexts. This is a common problem in articles on such regions. The usual approach, I think, is to go in the lead with the general definition used in the preponderance of reliable sources (without getting bogged down in nit-picks), then explain in the body of the article what the definitional divergences are in particular contexts.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  00:39, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
You aren't going to see a better answer than that one right there. KDS4444Talk 07:44, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
That seems to be a good approach. Thanks for the input everyone. Buffaboy talk 02:59, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Upstate New York

The thruway runs from east to west, if you live north of the thruway you are in Upstate New York. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.123.143.102 (talk) 16:10, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I think of the Shawangunks ridge (and the valley behind it, e.g. Roundout, Bashakill, etc; i.e. approximately a line drawn from Port Jervis thru Wurtsboro and Ellenville to Kingston/Rhinebeck, or rather just to the southeast of these communities) as the boundary between upstate and downstate. The area south and east of that diagonal is "downstate" as I see it. Everything north and west of that line is "upstate", with Kingston and that valley being a border region. This corresponds with a break in the continuity of population distribution, as a result of the Shawangunks (See http://www.dec.ny.gov/images/air_images/24hrpm25fig5.jpg) and, to a great extent, with who commutes to work in and around NYC. 50.149.22.198 (talk) 13:48, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Demographics

There should be a way to get a population number and even more in depth data straight from county data on Wikipedia or elsewhere without manually working the numbers one by one. B137 (talk) 00:54, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Namely I questioned that the population of Upstate went through steady decline for an extended period ("Since the late 20th century, with the decline of manufacturing and its jobs, the area has generally suffered a net population loss."). Much of the area is and always has been very sparsely populated. It's easy to ignore all that and only focus on anyplace that's anyplace, that being Buf, Roc, Syr, Albany and maybe binghamton. While these have declined sadly over the latter half of the 20th century, the areas around them haven't necessarily. For example, Monroe County, New York only logged one tiny loss for 1980 of 1.4% but quickly gained it back and is unequivocally higher than ever. Not so with Erie County, New York (Buffalo, New York) and Onondaga County, New York (Syracuse). But bring in many of the podunk counties, some of which don't even have incorporated cities, and the population has gone up by almost two million, an increase of more than 35%. If you include most of the next few counties as part of "downstate", that accounts for an increase of a few hundred thousand, not nearly enough to justify saying upstate had a "net population loss trend [over an extended period]", though a few counties did lose some. Not to discredit the Rust Belt for not being awful, the economy is rather stagnant (New York high-speed rail mentions this) outside of NYC. Little things come and go but nothing major. B137 (talk) 00:14, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

  • New York City
  • New York
  • Rockland
  • Westchester
  • Nassau
  • Suffolk
  • upstate 1950: 14830192 - 276129 - 672765 - 625816 - 89276 - 7891957 = 5,274,249
  • upstate 2010: 19378102 - 8175133 - 311687 - 949113 - 1339532 - 1493350 = 7,109,287
Historical population
CensusPop.Note
1790340,120
1800589,05173.2%
1810959,04962.8%
18201,372,81243.1%
18301,918,60839.8%
18402,428,92126.6%
18503,097,39427.5%
18603,880,73525.3%
18704,382,75912.9%
18805,082,87116.0%
18906,003,17418.1%
19007,268,89421.1%
19109,113,61425.4%
192010,385,22714.0%
193012,588,06621.2%
194013,479,1427.1%
195014,830,19210.0%
196016,782,30413.2%
197018,236,9678.7%
198017,558,072−3.7%
199017,990,4552.5%
200018,976,4575.5%
201019,378,1022.1%
2014 (est.)19,746,2271.9%
New York





















  • Minus all this for any given census year should yield the widely acknowledged "upstate" pop.
Historical population
YearPop.±%
16984,937—    
17125,840+18.3%
17237,248+24.1%
173710,664+47.1%
174611,717+9.9%
175613,046+11.3%
177121,863+67.6%
179049,401+126.0%
180079,216+60.4%
1810119,734+51.1%
1820152,056+27.0%
1830242,278+59.3%
1840391,114+61.4%
1850696,115+78.0%
18601,174,779+68.8%
18701,478,103+25.8%
18801,911,698+29.3%
18902,507,414+31.2%
19003,437,202+37.1%
19104,766,883+38.7%
19205,620,048+17.9%
19306,930,446+23.3%
19407,454,995+7.6%
19507,891,957+5.9%
19607,781,984−1.4%
19707,894,862+1.5%
19807,071,639−10.4%
19907,322,564+3.5%
20008,008,288+9.4%
20108,175,133+2.1%
20148,491,079+3.9%
New York City
Historical population
CensusPop.Note
18006,353
18107,75822.1%
18208,83713.9%
18309,3886.2%
184011,97527.6%
185016,96241.6%
186022,49232.6%
187025,21312.1%
188027,6909.8%
189035,16227.0%
190038,2988.9%
191046,87322.4%
192045,548−2.8%
193059,59930.8%
194074,26124.6%
195089,27620.2%
1960136,80353.2%
1970229,90368.1%
1980259,53012.9%
1990265,4752.3%
2000286,7538.0%
2010311,6878.7%
2014 (est.)323,866Rockland3.9%
Historical population
CensusPop.Note
179023,978
180027,42814.4%
181030,27210.4%
182032,6387.8%
183036,45611.7%
184048,68633.5%
185058,26319.7%
186099,49770.8%
1870131,34832.0%
1880108,988−17.0%
1890146,77234.7%
1900184,25725.5%
1910283,05553.6%
1920344,43621.7%
1930520,94751.2%
1940573,55810.1%
1950625,8169.1%
1960808,89129.3%
1970894,40410.6%
1980866,599−3.1%
1990874,8661.0%
2000923,4595.6%
2010949,1132.8%
2014 (est.)972,634Westchester2.5%
Historical population
CensusPop.Note
190055,448
191083,93051.4%
1920126,12050.3%
1930303,053140.3%
1940406,74834.2%
1950672,76565.4%
19601,300,17193.3%
19701,428,0809.8%
19801,321,582−7.5%
19901,287,348−2.6%
20001,334,5443.7%
20101,339,5320.4%
2014 (est.)1,358,627Nassau1.4%
Historical population
CensusPop.Note
179016,400
180019,73520.3%
181021,1137.0%
182023,93613.4%
183026,78011.9%
184032,46921.2%
185036,92213.7%
186043,27517.2%
187046,9248.4%
188052,88812.7%
189062,49118.2%
190077,58224.1%
191096,13823.9%
1920110,24614.7%
1930161,05546.1%
1940197,35522.5%
1950276,12939.9%
1960666,784141.5%
19701,124,95068.7%
19801,284,23114.2%
19901,321,8642.9%
20001,419,3697.4%
20101,493,3505.2%
2014 (est.)1,502,968Suffolk0.6%
  • The clear conclusion from all this is that Upstate has NOT been losing population over the [late] 20th century. I'm not advocating for the economy or significance of the sparsely populated and much less know state of New York, but let's recognize the facts. B137 (talk) 17:54, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Bold Title in First Sentence of Article

I would like to start a discussion on here to achieve consensus and avoid edit warring. Editor User:Zacwill wants to change the bold title in the first sentence from "Upstate New York" to just "Upstate". I believe that the bold text should remain "Upstate New York", for the following reasons:

User:Zacwill, could you please provide your counterarguments here?

Vmanjr (talk) 12:03, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Upstate again

There's a paragraph in the Definition section that talks about where "upstate" is and gives a source reference, but not a single thing in the definition is supported by that reference, it's like the reference was put there completely at random:

There is no clear official boundary between Upstate New York and Downstate New York. The broadest usage of the term Upstate New York excludes only New York City and Long Island, which are always considered to be part of Downstate New York. Another usage locates the Upstate/Downstate boundary further north, at the point where New York City's suburbs segue into its exurbs, as the exurbs do not fall within the US Census' urban area. This boundary places most, but not all, of Westchester and Rockland Counties in Downstate, while putting the northwestern edge of Rockland County as well as the northernmost quarter of Westchester County (including Peekskill) in Upstate.[note 1][failed verification]

I've marked the ref as {{failed verification}} as a first step, but imho that doesn't go far enough, as a whole series of unsubstantiated claims like this needs a reliable source, or several of them, and someone should either provide them within a reasonable time frame, or else the entire paragraph should be removed. Mathglot (talk) 09:59, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

References for 'Upstate again'

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Upstate New York. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 00:16, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Two questions to add to this article

  1. What percentage of the state of New York's area does this constitute??
  2. What percentage of the population of New York lives in this area?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:30, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

The geography of Upstate New York

What is considered upstate New York? Plus, although much of upstate New York is rural, much of it is suburban and rugged. Can we specify which parts? 2605:6001:E7C4:1E00:B1EA:9BC8:FF42:C2CE (talk) 21:31, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

The article refers to Upstate New York as a whole. As you may have read in the article, Upstate New York is an ill-defined region, with little consensus on a precise definition. Looking at the counties that are almost always considered to be upstate, while some portions of these counties are rugged, and few (but not many) parts are suburban, this does not apply to the majority of the area. Rural is a broader term (and might be broader than you're considering it to be), as it includes any type of land that isn't urban or suburban (generalizing a bit here, but rugged areas are typically considered to be rural). More importantly, the point of calling out the rural nature at the top of the article is to justify why upstate has a strong agricultural industry, and not to generalize about all of the land.
I believe that the diverse geography of Upstate New York is discussed a bit in the Geography section, and touches on how there is a mix of mountainous areas and rural land. That section could certainly be expanded to better discuss the variation in land - feel free to make the edits there.Vmanjr (talk) 21:42, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Capitalization?

@Vmanjr: You reverted my edit changing "State" to lower case (or perhaps it just got caught up, citing talk discussion that I am unable to find. This is clearly incorrect: the name of the state is "New York", not "New York State", so "state" is not part of the name and should therefore not be capitalized.

On a slightly related note, MOS:COMPASS would seem to advise that we not capitalize "upstate", either, as most sources I've seen do not do so. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 04:19, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

The capitalization "New York State" is by far the more common usage. The name of the city is also "New York", but we capitalize "New York City" as well, not "New York city". And "upstate" isn't the name of a compass direction, so MOS:COMPASS doesn't necessarily imply, but in my experience sources seem to be pretty divided on capitalizing "Upstate". AJD (talk) 04:47, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
@Sdkb: Sorry - it was unintended collateral damage while trying to handle the problematic edits that came afterward from the IP user. That said, I am in agreement with AJD - "New York State" is the more common capitalization (even the state government uses it officially, and NYS has long been shorthand used in the state), and the capitalization of upstate seems ambiguous at best across all sorts of texts. Personally, I think it would be good to stick to "New York State", and to try to reach some sort of consensus on the capitalization of upstate and downstate throughout the article. Vmanjr (talk) 12:52, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Definition in state law

In the definition section it says, "Westchester is seemingly always considered Downstate under state law." According to the DMV, however, which defines Upstate "as any county north of the NYC border."[1] I don't know if this needs to be mentioned in the article or not, but it at least means the passage I quoted above should be changed. Hahafunnyboy (talk) 21:55, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

"New York (upstate)" listed at Redirects for discussion

  A discussion is taking place to address the redirect New York (upstate). The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 October 27#New York (upstate) until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. feminist (+) 10:43, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Demographics (continued )

There should be a way to get a population number and even more in depth data straight from county data on Wikipedia or elsewhere without manually working the numbers one by one. B137 (talk) 00:54, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Namely I questioned that the population of Upstate went through steady decline for an extended period ("Since the late 20th century, with the decline of manufacturing and its jobs, the area has generally suffered a net population loss."). Much of the area is and always has been very sparsely populated. It's easy to ignore all that and only focus on anyplace that's anyplace, that being Buf, Roc, Syr, Albany and maybe binghamton. While these have declined sadly over the latter half of the 20th century, the areas around them haven't necessarily. For example, Monroe County, New York only logged one tiny loss for 1980 of 1.4% but quickly gained it back and is unequivocally higher than ever. Not so with Erie County, New York (Buffalo, New York) and Onondaga County, New York (Syracuse). But bring in many of the podunk counties, some of which don't even have incorporated cities, and the population has gone up by almost two million, an increase of more than 35%. If you include most of the next few counties as part of "downstate", that accounts for an increase of a few hundred thousand, not nearly enough to justify saying upstate had a "net population loss trend [over an extended period]", though a few counties did lose some. Not to discredit the Rust Belt for not being awful, the economy is rather stagnant (New York high-speed rail mentions this) outside of NYC. Little things come and go but nothing major. B137 (talk) 00:14, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

  • New York City
  • New York
  • Rockland
  • Westchester
  • Nassau
  • Suffolk
  • upstate 1950: 14830192 - 276129 - 672765 - 625816 - 89276 - 7891957 = 5,274,249
  • upstate 2010: 19378102 - 8175133 - 311687 - 949113 - 1339532 - 1493350 = 7,109,287
Historical population
CensusPop.Note
1790340,120
1800589,05173.2%
1810959,04962.8%
18201,372,81243.1%
18301,918,60839.8%
18402,428,92126.6%
18503,097,39427.5%
18603,880,73525.3%
18704,382,75912.9%
18805,082,87116.0%
18906,003,17418.1%
19007,268,89421.1%
19109,113,61425.4%
192010,385,22714.0%
193012,588,06621.2%
194013,479,1427.1%
195014,830,19210.0%
196016,782,30413.2%
197018,236,9678.7%
198017,558,072−3.7%
199017,990,4552.5%
200018,976,4575.5%
201019,378,1022.1%
2014 (est.)19,746,2271.9%
New York





















  • Minus all this for any given census year should yield the widely acknowledged "upstate" pop.
Historical population
YearPop.±%
16984,937—    
17125,840+18.3%
17237,248+24.1%
173710,664+47.1%
174611,717+9.9%
175613,046+11.3%
177121,863+67.6%
179049,401+126.0%
180079,216+60.4%
1810119,734+51.1%
1820152,056+27.0%
1830242,278+59.3%
1840391,114+61.4%
1850696,115+78.0%
18601,174,779+68.8%
18701,478,103+25.8%
18801,911,698+29.3%
18902,507,414+31.2%
19003,437,202+37.1%
19104,766,883+38.7%
19205,620,048+17.9%
19306,930,446+23.3%
19407,454,995+7.6%
19507,891,957+5.9%
19607,781,984−1.4%
19707,894,862+1.5%
19807,071,639−10.4%
19907,322,564+3.5%
20008,008,288+9.4%
20108,175,133+2.1%
20148,491,079+3.9%
New York City
Historical population
CensusPop.Note
18006,353
18107,75822.1%
18208,83713.9%
18309,3886.2%
184011,97527.6%
185016,96241.6%
186022,49232.6%
187025,21312.1%
188027,6909.8%
189035,16227.0%
190038,2988.9%
191046,87322.4%
192045,548−2.8%
193059,59930.8%
194074,26124.6%
195089,27620.2%
1960136,80353.2%
1970229,90368.1%
1980259,53012.9%
1990265,4752.3%
2000286,7538.0%
2010311,6878.7%
2014 (est.)323,866Rockland3.9%
Historical population
CensusPop.Note
179023,978
180027,42814.4%
181030,27210.4%
182032,6387.8%
183036,45611.7%
184048,68633.5%
185058,26319.7%
186099,49770.8%
1870131,34832.0%
1880108,988−17.0%
1890146,77234.7%
1900184,25725.5%
1910283,05553.6%
1920344,43621.7%
1930520,94751.2%
1940573,55810.1%
1950625,8169.1%
1960808,89129.3%
1970894,40410.6%
1980866,599−3.1%
1990874,8661.0%
2000923,4595.6%
2010949,1132.8%
2014 (est.)972,634Westchester2.5%
Historical population
CensusPop.Note
190055,448
191083,93051.4%
1920126,12050.3%
1930303,053140.3%
1940406,74834.2%
1950672,76565.4%
19601,300,17193.3%
19701,428,0809.8%
19801,321,582−7.5%
19901,287,348−2.6%
20001,334,5443.7%
20101,339,5320.4%
2014 (est.)1,358,627Nassau1.4%
Historical population
CensusPop.Note
179016,400
180019,73520.3%
181021,1137.0%
182023,93613.4%
183026,78011.9%
184032,46921.2%
185036,92213.7%
186043,27517.2%
187046,9248.4%
188052,88812.7%
189062,49118.2%
190077,58224.1%
191096,13823.9%
1920110,24614.7%
1930161,05546.1%
1940197,35522.5%
1950276,12939.9%
1960666,784141.5%
19701,124,95068.7%
19801,284,23114.2%
19901,321,8642.9%
20001,419,3697.4%
20101,493,3505.2%
2014 (est.)1,502,968Suffolk0.6%
  • The clear conclusion from all this is that Upstate has NOT been losing population over the [late] 20th century. I'm not advocating for the economy or significance of the sparsely populated and much less know state of New York, but let's recognize the facts. B137 (talk) 17:54, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
A table should be built by taking New York State numbers and subtracting at least eight counties five of New York City two of Long Island and Westchester county. If not the six counties above that up to the 42° latitude line.