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Central Illinois (Champaign-Urbana home of the Fighting Illini and Springfield home of the capital of Illinois, the only one of the three to share the same state as Chicago) vs Southern Wisconsin (Milwaukee and Madison, plenty of Cubs fans invade Miller Park yearly and has a lot of transplants from Chicago) vs Southwest Michigan (Battle Creek, Grand Rapids, Benton Harbor, Lake Michigan coast part is especially known for being popular among Chicagoland tourists)
I went with Southern Wisconsin
Last edited by illadelph73; 12-05-2022 at 09:56 PM..
Basically just the area from Milwaukee south along Lake Michigan through NW IN to SW Michigan. The rest of the regions of IL, WI, and MI are their own things, except for the Chicagoland-based student populations in Champaign-Urbana and Madison, and maybe the government workers in Springfield (but even that’s a stretch).
Definitely Wisconsin IMO. SW Michigan does get a lot of Chicago tourists and people having second homes there, but it's too rural and not ethnic-white enough. Milwaukee, Janesville, Beloit, and up through Sheboygan and Manitowoc have a more blue-collar Chicagoland-like feel, with lots of German culture, Polish, Italians, etc., while Madison is more like white-collar Chicagoland.
Central Illinois, though mostly because of all the Chicago-area kids who attend the various colleges downstate -- the rest of Illinois south of I-80 wants nothing to do with Chicago.
Southern Wisconsin is a tempting response especially with Kenosha being "officially" considered part of the Chicago MSA (though IMO they're more Milwaukee-oriented culturally), but any further west than Walworth County and Chicago is rarely thought of as anything more than a source of nuisance traffic on its way to various vacation spots.
As a Chicagoan I love Milwaukee and visit maybe twice a year. Most of Milwaukee always felt to me like a blue collar extension of Chicago’s Northside.
For NW Indiana not to be included in the poll, do you consider it part of the Chicagoland area and thus too close? IF it was included in the poll , it would be my choice.
Definitely Wisconsin IMO. SW Michigan does get a lot of Chicago tourists and people having second homes there, but it's too rural and not ethnic-white enough. Milwaukee, Janesville, Beloit, and up through Sheboygan and Manitowoc have a more blue-collar Chicagoland-like feel, with lots of German culture, Polish, Italians, etc., while Madison is more like white-collar Chicagoland.
Yeah, I’d probably say southeastern WI is most culturally aligned with Chicagoland. All of southern WI, no. Anything west of Lake Geneva loses any major similarity. It’s really just Milwaukee MSA.
This won’t be received well by Chicagoans, but I’d almost argue that southeastern Michigan is the best comparison when comparing overall environment. E.g. the Detroit MSA is far more similar to Chicagoland than any city and metro in the Great Lakes region outside of Milwaukee. I think a lot of that stems from growth period, and its relative position on Lake St. Clair. That, and there is a lot of parody between suburbs in general. Places like the Grosse Pointes could easily be compared to the north shore suburbs, while Birmingham could easily be compared to villages like Hinsdale. Even Bloomfield/Rochester/Auburn Hills could be confused with the Barringtons. And culturally, they’re reallllyyyy not that far off in the grand scheme of the United States.
Last edited by mwj119; 12-11-2022 at 07:44 AM..
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