From Wikitravel

I moved this page from "New York State" to be in accord with the article naming conventions. -- Evan 11:36, 4 Nov 2003 (PST)

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So, I tried to get started on regions in New York state. I took a couple of the regions that were on here already, and then I went to the ILOVENEWYORK Web site and copied some off of their regions index. I only copied the ones that sounded familiar to me and that seemed like real regions that people know about. The four I left out were "Greater Niagara", "Chautauqua-Allegheny", "Central-Leatherstocking" and "Capital-Saratoga". I'd heard of the places, but these sounded kinda mashed-up for some kind of administrative purposes.

Anyways, does anyone have a clue for real names for these regions? Or are there other ways to split up the state? New York seems like it has a lot of space and a lot of distinct parts to it. -- Evan 17:10, 10 Nov 2003 (PST)

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As far as regions go: did you mean Thousand Islands? Never heard of Thousand Lakes. The rest sound fine to me as travel blocks. SC 17:49, 10 Nov 2003 (PST)

[edit] Saranac Lake?

What's with all the stuff about Saranac Lake on the New York (state) page? Looks like someone put some promotional stuff up, and in the wrong place. I'm moving it to the "talk" page for Saranac Lake, where people can decide what to do with it.

Michael 07:58, 27 Apr 2006 (UTC)

[edit] For Contributors

• Hudson Valley Sojourner has a list of towns and websites for the Hudson valley.

[edit] Regions

What's up with regions for this state? Is there a plan? Albany/Saratoga seems to be left out. What about http://www.iloveny.com/search/regions_index.asp ? OldPine 21:05, 28 August 2006 (EDT)

It doesn't appear that anyone has proposed a regional breakdown for New York yet, so no, there isn't currently a plan. The region names on the above website look a bit clunky to me - are they in common usage? Also, are there fairly well-understood borders to the region? See Talk:Ohio, Talk:Massachusetts and Talk:California for discussions we've had about region names in other states. -- Ryan 20:58, 28 August 2006 (EDT)

Bah, that's me above. I got logged out, so I just signed it. I don't know the state all that well. Just noticed the discussion at the top of the page. I don't think there are borders that are all that solid. Probably need to designate what counties are in what region. I believe I saw that that had been done for the Hudson River Valley region here on Wikitravel. The region names are not in common use in some instances, but I don't think that can be avoided without going into a larger number of regions -- perhaps to the county level in some cases. OldPine 21:05, 28 August 2006 (EDT)

The state tourism [1] designations aren't bad, but the overlap is going to be the stuff of countless edit wars. Even the state tourism site gets wacky on this: it shows all of Ulster County in the Catskill region, but the county seat, Kingston (located on the Hudson River), can only be searched from the Hudson Valley region. Some clarification needs to be made, but it isn't clear (pardon the pun) how. SHC 21:27, 28 August 2006 (EDT)

Btw — David, nice work on Saratoga Springs. SHC 21:29, 28 August 2006 (EDT)

Thanks. Can't stand to see great places with crap articles. It's a powerful engine :) Thanks for pointing out the fuzziness. I had a feeling that was the case. OldPine 21:45, 28 August 2006 (EDT)

All right, I've read the discussions on regions for OH, MA, and CA. Looks like NY will have the same issues as anywhere else. The state tourism designations are as good as any other arbitrary naming convention so I propose that we bring some order to the NY state article by adopting those 11 regions. This should be relatively painless as the existing 9 regions in New York (state) already roughly follow the tourism layout. Aside from a couple renamings and additions, the only major surgery would be splitting the Southern Tier between Finger Lakes and Chautauqua-Allegheny. Fans of the Southern Tier Expressway may squawk, but even the name of that highway is facing extinction under the DOT's converting it to I86. SHC 13:35, 29 August 2006 (EDT)

(re-indenting) A few quick comments - first, does it make sense to combine Long Island & New York (city) and (perhaps) Hudson Valley into a single region? Right now the New York (city) article isn't a region article - it's a huge, huge city article, and it seems like trying to make it a top level region article would be like trying to make Los Angeles a top-level region for California. Second, the iloveny site has two regions for Western New York. Do we need two, or does a single region make more sense? And last of all, is there some way we can arbitrarily assign known borders to these regions? Can we use existing counties as guidelines, or rivers, or some other concrete border to determine what is in (for example) the Fingerlakes region vs. what is in Chautauqua-Allegheny? I've been through New York a bunch of times, but I don't have a lot of local knowledge so I don't know if any of the above makes sense, just throwing it out there... -- Ryan 14:02, 29 August 2006 (EDT)

Looks like the iloveny site is using county boundaries. OldPine 14:12, 29 August 2006 (EDT)

Treating New York (city) similarly to Los Angeles, as part of a top-level region, kind of makes sense since the city sprawls across parts of the Hudson Valley and Long Island. However, I'm not sure where to draw the line to the north. New Yorker's think of anything north of the Bronx as "upstate" (meaning they view the entire Hudson Valley as part of the hinterlands) while the reverse view tends to lump together the lower half of the Hudson Valley, NYC, and Long Island. From a traveler's perspective, the latter generalization of a massive "downstate" region makes sense as the lower half of the Hudson Valley (from NYC to Poughkeepsie) and Long Island are closely linked economically and by transportation to NYC. As a resident of the Hudson Valley who works in Manhattan, I make regional distinctions that a casual traveler might not want or need to make, so before I or anyone else starts to reconstruct this end of the state, I would like to hear opinions of those who are not as close to the subject.

I've lived in and traveled around Western New York. For the purposes of a traveler, treating it as a single region makes sense. Southern Tier is not a distinction a traveler would make and would be better split between Western New York and Finger Lakes. County borders should suffice for most of this. SHC 14:05, 30 August 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Regions again

Yikes! Have we figured out yet where Albany resides? --Peter ^Talk 15:36, 30 December 2007 (EST)

Alright, we need this figured out. NY is too important a state to neglect to build an actual regions hierarchy. The current one is a mess, but I've tried to apply it as best as I can here to a draft regions map. Here is a key to show which county is which. I left out Thousand Islands, since that seems to be more of an "other destination" than a region. Do these look right at all? Is this how we want to break them down? Or should we totally overhaul the regions? --Peter ^Talk 17:55, 21 February 2008 (EST)

No big objections, but it looks like one of the green key items (Mohawk?) should match the purple region. 75.67.115.59 18:54, 21 February 2008 (EST)

True, I've now fixed the key. Any other thoughts on this breakdown? Should we make this live (with a prettier map, rest assured) or does NY need a total redo on the regions breakdown? --Peter ^Talk 00:56, 6 March 2008 (EST)

I'd say, combine Southern Tier with Catskills and Finger Lakes; Keep Adirondacks as is; Take Rochester out and shove it into a NW NY (include Geneseo and Corning in this region). Keep Hudson Valley as is or pop Albany into Mohawk, Saratoga Sp into Adirondacks and keep Hudson Valley as the area around the Hudson south of Albany.--Wandering 21:42, 6 March 2008 (EST)

OK, I combined the Southern Tier with the Finger Lakes, while shrinking the Finger Lakes to the counties that actually contain the lakes in question. I also expanded the Adirondacks a bit into other counties that contain chunks of the park proper, including bits of Oneida & Herkimer counties (the bits that are Adirondack Park property). I also moved Albany into the Mowhawk Valley and displayed NYC as its own top-level region, as per suggestions in the discussions above. I'm inclined to keep the Catskills as a separate region, because I have some background there and have always considered it a unique travel region. I had trouble creating a NW NY region, because that just didn't fit well with the other existing regions and with the actual county borders themselves.

But the one thorn in my organizational side remaining is that Jefferson County (in blue). It doesn't fit anywhere. It's out of the Adirondacks, and no finger lakes get anywhere near there. The only real reason to visit, as I understand it, is for the Thousand Islands. Perhaps we could group it with the Thousand Islands article, as a subregion? --Peter ^Talk 19:32, 7 March 2008 (EST)

Just to be clear, I'd like to call this an established consensus before overhauling the regions (because the overhaul itself is a chore). So I'll want to a) wait one month, and b) get at least one voice here to let me know someone else supports this new regional hierarchy per "regions draft 2." --Peter ^Talk 22:59, 20 March 2008 (EDT)

Hey, I'm new, but I might through a wrench into this. The proposed divisions are decent, but there are still some quirks. I know there will always be some quirks, but I thought I'd mention them anyway. The main problems are three major non-Buffalo upstate cities -- Albany, Rochester, and Syracuse. Rochester and all of Monroe County (plus Livingston County, really) are right on the cusp between Western New York and the Finger Lakes region. The dividing line should really go right down the Genesee River, if anywhere, but then you have the absurdity of splitting Rochester over two regions. I note that the Rochester article places it in the (article-less) Genesee Valley region, which is as good a description for Monroe and Livingston as any. The Finger Lakes article mentions Rochester as a member but not Monroe County. Syracuse I usually consider part of Central New York (with Utica) rather than Finger Lakes, but again it's a transition area. Albany's problems are mentioned above; it probably has the most in common with the Hudson Valley but has Central and Adirondack properties as well. LtPowers 21:08, 4 May 2008 (EDT)

OK, it took all morning but I created this map to show my own perceptions of the New York regions. I think it also demonstrates the major problem areas (namely, where the gradients are). I also had no idea what to do with Chenango County; that's why it's gray. (Can Wikitravel not display SVGs natively?) LtPowers 12:46, 26 May 2008 (EDT)

Awesome map! And the wrench is welcome—I really don't know the state that well (outside of the areas along the Northway, north of Albany. I like your regions breakdown a lot.

Splitting counties is certainly fine, although it helps to have a clear geographic indicator of where the split is, so that it's clear into which regions towns should be placed. We could just use your map for the time being with the gradients, and tackle specific intra-county boundary questions ad hoc. The major destinations need to be placed in a specific region, regardless of the fact that they could fit into more than one—our regional hierarchies exist more for organizational purposes than anything else; we can note Albany's relevance to Central New York, for example, in that region article, while keeping Albany firmly in the Hudson Valley region article.

I'd prefer that we keep Schenectady, Troy, Saratoga Springs together, IMO in the Hudson Valley region. I'd lean towards putting Syracuse in Central New York. About Jamestown I honestly have no idea—I just flipped a coin and it says Southern Tier. The Chenango Co WP article claims it's a part of the Southern Tier, so we might as well include the whole of it there, unless we can find a reason not to.

Regarding the map, I personally like the color gradients, although I think I might hold a minority opinion on that (if I remember this discussion correctly). Regardless, I think we could make use of your map with the gradients, provided we increase the color contrasts between bordering regions—organizational clarity > aesthetics. And we technically could render SVGs, but for some reason chose not to. The solution is to export a PNG file & upload it as well. I'd like to hear your thoughts on those final destinations for the borderline cases & otherwise we should wait a couple days, see if anyone else chimes in, and then go forward with the reorganization. --Peter ^Talk 20:03, 26 May 2008 (EDT)

Oh and one last point—we probably shouldn't call the NYC region New York City unless it follows the exact boundaries of the city itself (mostly to avoid disambiguation problems). We could instead follow the Chicagoland example and create a "Metro New York" region article, which would link the 9 most relevant cities (including NYC) in the area, as well as the relevant subregions in New Jersey & Connecticut (Gateway (New Jersey), Fairfield County, & Greater New Haven). --Peter ^Talk 20:09, 26 May 2008 (EDT)

Well I don't claim to be an expert on the regions of New York. The map I whipped up was mainly intended to illustrate my own perceptions. And "New York City" was just a convenient label at the time; I agree if we include Westchester and Rockland Counties that we should be clear about the region name.

As noted in the discussion you linked, color gradients do undermine the strict hierarchical organization of Wikitravel, and I would agree they are undesirable in a map intended to illustrate that organization. At the same time, a map with gradients (more expertly executed than mine, I hope -- as you note, the color selection is less than optimal and the gradients are rudimentary) illustrates the reality better. In either case, a note in the article about the distinction between "Wikitravel's regions" and actual state regions may be useful (although I'm sure some would argue unnecessary).

As far as assigning the regions goes, we may just have to bite the bullet and just "pick something", so to speak. The alternative is to use the official tourism regions from the state. The main disadvantage of that option is that said regions appear to be not very well defined; the borders cut through the middle of some of the counties at seemingly arbitrary angles, at least based on the maps on the iloveny.com web site -- the border between Hudson Valley and Catskills appears to cut straight through Ulster County, for example. As you note, this is not necessarily a deal-breaker, but it makes it hard to have a single article on those split counties. (The state DMV offers a series of regional license plate designs based on these regions, and I note that Ulster County can have either the Hudson Valley or Catskills design.)

My personal preference would be to keep the region borders along county lines to avoid that sort of thing. The main problem areas in such an organization would then be:

1. Monroe and Livingston Counties. Rochester, as I noted above, is smack in the middle between the Niagara Frontier and the Finger Lakes. (I'm still undecided between "Niagara Frontier" and "Western New York". In Rochester the term encompasses everything west of Syracuse, but in Buffalo it usually means just the westernmost seven counties. On the other hand, it's a more well known term than "Niagara Frontier".) Livingston County probably fits best with the Finger Lakes, since Hemlock and Conesus are actually in the county and the Genesee River Gorge, the main tourist attraction, has many similarities (attraction-wise) to the Finger Lakes. Monroe County is still the major stumbling point. With the strong city of Rochester in the middle, it is really a region unto itself, although it of course borrows from the surrounding areas on their respective sides of the county. I think the weight of argument is toward the Finger Lakes, ultimately; any good-sized city is going to have strong distinctions from the rest of its region, and the state's tourism divisions can't be ignored.
2. Chautauqua and Allegheny Counties. The state punts on this one and puts them in their own region, but I think it's too small for our purposes. I think I agree with you that Jamestown works best as a Southern Tier city, so in they go.
3. Wayne County. If Rochester is in the Finger Lakes region, then Wayne County has to be, as it is completely surrounded, despite having no lakes. It does have lots of small towns and lots of farms, though, so it works.
4. Oswego County. Has elements of both the North Country and Central New York, but probably has more in common with the Syracuse/Utica area.
5. Onondaga County. Central, I think, despite the State putting it in the Finger Lakes. Onondaga Lake isn't a Finger Lake and Syracuse should be grouped with Utica and Rome in my opinion.
6. Chenango County. To address your suggestion above, I don't think it fits in the Southern Tier because it doesn't border Pennsylvania's Northern Tier. The real problem is -- there's nothing there. Its only city is Norwich, with less than 8,000 people, and I can't find any real attractions even on the county's own web site. Culturally it's probably most aligned with the Finger Lakes, although Chenango Lake isn't technically a Finger Lake. I'm tempted to toss it in with Central New York; the state has it in the Central-Leatherstocking region with Broome, so maybe that works.
7. Albany, Schenectady, and Saratoga Counties. I agree with you that the three cities should be with Troy; I think we can safely lump them in with Poughkeepsie and the Hudson Valley counties.
8. Herkimer County. Ugh. If ever a county needed to be split, this is it. It's the big tall one east of Utica. It's in the Utica-Rome MSA, which would put it in the Central New York region, but the northern half is unambiguously part of the Adirondacks. No clue what to do here. The state splits it in half.
9. St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties. Again, half North Country, half Adirondacks. I'm tempted to not try to separate out the North Country as a separate region from the Adirondacks. That would have a few benefits: there'd be no temptation to put Oswego in the region, leaving it unambiguously in Central New York; we could put Herkimer in Central without leaving only three counties for the huge Adirondacks region; the North Country/Thousand Islands areas provide more to say about the region than just "here there be mountains". Disadvantages: There ain't no mountains in Jefferson County; the two regions really are distinct, especially tourism-wise.

I suppose it will be best to just accept that the divisions are going to be somewhat arbitrary. Travelers to New York, though, often explore large areas in order to find enough attractions, so much of the relevant information will be at the Region level rather than County or City. That makes it important to make sure the regions are useful rather than arbitrary.

(One other way of analyzing the regions: the Rule of 7+/-2 (mentioned at Wikitravel:Geographical hierarchy) might be useful to look at. Most of our regions fall within 5-9 counties each, except for the Finger Lakes (10 with Monroe and Livingston), Adirondacks (3 or 4 without the North Country), and Long Island. I think that's probably an acceptable level of variation. The number of regions is 10, which is high but not enough to split into two five-region sub-states.)

LtPowers 15:11, 27 May 2008 (EDT)

Lets see, first regarding "split counties": they're really only a problem when figuring out into which parent region to list cities/towns that belong in that county (e.g., if we split Monroe Co., do we put Rochester in the list for Niagara Frontier or for Finger Lakes?). We can still write a unitary region article for the "split" county, and simply list it as having two parents. Moreover, while we use them often as a tool for drawing boundaries, Wikitravel usually disparages the use of administrative divisions as travel divisions unless it really makes sense to do so.

To address the points of controversy:

1. I'm sure you have a better handle on this than I do, but I'm tempted to agree to putting both Monroe & Livingston into the Finger Lakes region. I think that using the term Niagara Frontier, rather than Western New York, makes this easier to do (it's hard to argue that Rochester isn't in "Western New York"). Wikitravel also prefers descriptive names beyond boring, simply directional ones, so I think we should pick Niagara Frontier.
2. To the Southern Tier then.
3. Fair enough.
4. Agreed, Oswego to Central New York.
5. Agreed.
6. I think Chenango is probably unimportant where we could just lump it with any of the surrounding regions; since you prefer Central New York, lets do that.
7. Done then.
8. This is about as clear a case for a split as there could be. The location of the split couldn't be easier to describe—the park boundaries—and it should be listed from both the Adirondacks & Central New York region pages (if we ever actually get to writing a Herkimer county region article!).
9. Here too I'm very tempted to split counties, since the park boundaries are easy for anyone to double check on an online mapping service or whatever. The regions are definitely different enough where writing one region article would be odd; also the Adirondacks are such a well understood travel region that it might seem a bit amateurish to readers if we have a bunch of non-Adirondacks information tossed into that article. I like the North Country-Adirondacks split. I'm actually a little tempted to split Clinton County along the park boundary as well.

On another note, I'd put Fulton County in the Adirondacks, since well more than half of its territory is part of the park. And I wouldn't worry too much about the 7+2 rule here since we're close to it all over the state, and that rule is more of a guideline for regions breakdowns (whereas it's pretty much a hard rule with cities lists).

I've put up a new draft regions map. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts, and I think we're pretty close to having this figured out. --Peter ^Talk 15:39, 28 May 2008 (EDT)

I'm fine with splitting counties as you suggest, so long as there's no compelling reason not to do so. I'm not sure about Clinton; you're more familiar with it than I am. Your map has Onondaga County (Syracuse's) in the wrong region; it should be in Central New York per the above.

Other than that, my only remaining concern is downstate. I'm a little worried that the Long Island region is too small, along with the part of the New York City Area region that's outside the city proper. That region is going to say "Well there's the city and then there's a few other things too." Would it be desirable/useful to combine them into one Downstate region?

-- LtPowers 17:07, 28 May 2008 (EDT)

OK, I've been thinking about Cortland County, and I think it belongs in Central New York, too. It has no Finger Lakes and it'll keep Chenango from sticking out so much. I think the two of them and Otsego County go well together. LtPowers 20:35, 2 June 2008 (EDT)

I'm on board with moving Cortland to Central NY & I'll make sure Onondaga winds up there too. I'd like to fold both Long Island (which should still retain its article as a sub-sub-region of NY state), NYC, and the two other downstate counties into that "Metro New York" region article, which would include the Gateway region of New Jersey & the relevant CT counties. I think I like that better than keeping all of the NYC metro area segregated by state. --Peter ^Talk 01:53, 3 June 2008 (EDT)

No arguments here, as long as I don't have to try to straighten out that Metro NYC article. =) So how do we go about getting a nice WikiTravel-style region map? LtPowers 09:59, 3 June 2008 (EDT)

Alright! This has been on my mind for about half a year, and it's finally complete! It'll probably be a while before I have the courage to try and develop a regions structure for the Adirondacks Park, although that is probably my favorite place in the US.

The only thing left on my mind is that the region descriptions are a little long—we might want to move those to serve as the introductory paragraphs for individual region articles & leave a shorter, punchier description. That's mainly just to conserve visual space on the state article. As for beautifying the map, the one I put up was all I intended to do. The svg is here if you'd like to modify it, and if you're looking to make it look more like the United States of America map, take a look at Wikitravel:Mapmaking Expedition & Wikitravel:How to draw a map. --Peter ^Talk 04:49, 4 June 2008 (EDT)

The map is definitely a good start, but I'll have a go at the colors I think (Catskills and Adirondacks are a bit close together in hue). I was going to quibble about the nine cities on the map, but there's more to do in Cooperstown, Saratoga Springs, and Ithaca than I realized, and I don't have any good replacements. The map looks bare to me without Watertown, Utica, Jamestown or Olean, and Binghamton, but nine's the rule, right? =)

I look forward to seeing what you do with the Adirondacks article; should we remove the Park as an Other Destination since it's apparently coterminous with the Region?

Apologies for the long-winded descriptions; I can try to pare some of them down. One or two sentences for each?

-- LtPowers 09:32, 4 June 2008 (EDT)

All right, time for another change, I think. It's absurd not to have Skaneateles in the Finger Lakes region, so I'm going to propose we extend a small loop east to encompass the final two lakes even though they're in Onondaga County. I'm also suggesting the top section of Steuben County be added to the region, so as to encompass the rest of Keuka Lake; that'll get all of the lakes and their shore communities into the Finger Lakes region, which I think is key. LtPowers 16:59, 15 June 2008 (EDT)

That sounds fair. The tricky part will be defining which new articles within Onondaga & Steuben counties will wind up in the Finger Lakes region, or grouped with their counties. But provided you keep an eye on things, all should be good. --Peter ^Talk 20:43, 17 June 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Highway map

I added a highway map, let me know if there are any improvements to be made. LtPowers 20:17, 12 June 2008 (EDT)

Hey, looks fantastic! I'd only recommend adding linked cities & other destinations (although we haven't yet figured out which 9 other destinations that will be...) in order to help move this article in the right direction. --Peter ^Talk 02:02, 14 June 2008 (EDT)

I tried having cities on the map but it cluttered things up quite a bit. The basic idea comes from the map on the Texas article, which has separate maps for cities and roads. LtPowers 09:58, 14 June 2008 (EDT)