I have in the past made maps up of New York State’s population, divided by population density or actual population per municipality. I almost always have to distort that maps for Upstate to show any detail, because of the extreme population concentration downstate, specifically in New York City.

Simply said, there is nothing in Upstate New York at all like downstate. There simply are not the concentrations of people or dense urban core. Our Upstate cities are dense compared to the surrounding countryside — often as much as 100 times more dense (e.g. 100 times more people per mile), but Manhattan is 9 times more dense then even our most dense upstate cities.

New York is truly a metropolitian area, unlike any other in New York State, and like few in America. I welds immense power not just over itself but the more rural parts upstate, and the surrounding countryside that seems — at least to the city folk — so unimportant compared to their extremely dense and complicated living arrangements.