I grew up in New York City, and I've always thought that the 5 boroughs of New York City along with Long Island and Westchester County should be their own state because of the cultural and political differences from the rest of New York state.

You could argue that Rhode Island is the one city-state in the US, the entire state (and a little of MA, but we’ll ignore that) is considered the Providence metro and Prov very clearly dominates the state economy. You can also travel through the entire state in under an hour

Wouldn't Alaska still be the largest original state (because it remains untouched, no breaking away points)?

Having lived in northern NJ and upstate NY, i think your idea makes lots of sense. Downstate NY has far more in common with NJ, CT, and surroundings than it does with upstate NY. It sways every NY election. Upstate would be very “red” with the exception of a few old Rust Belt cities. I know politicians would rather be downstate than in Albany (“Smallbany”).

My policy professor this quarter at UW told us that back when he was in our master's program, there would be at least one paper every year in each section about legalizing weed and the professors would make fun of the students openly, saying it could never happen. He graduated five years before recreational became the law. Never say never, especially not in policy spaces.

There would not be 168 senators, but only 166 senators. You added 34 new states, but lost NJ. So the net gain would be 33 states (or 66 senators).

South Korea has city-states, called Province-level Cities. After a metro area gets to 1 million people, it can apply to become a Metropolitan City, and is treated like the other provinces. Today there are 8 Province-level Cities, including Seoul and 6 Metropolitan Cities, plus Sejong, a government city.

That’s a lot of work you did for this episode. Fascinating thought exercise. Thanks for making something a little different!

What if only the big 3, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles become states?

your videos are really great, and so is your work. they provide very interesting content! i wish you good luck on this journey and thank you for the amazing videos!

Rockingham and Hillsborough counties in NH would go to war to *not* become a part of Boston.

A fascinating scenario. I appreciate the effort and detail you cover in your videos.

The political consequences depend on if you lump the suburbs into these new states. For example most of the political power of Detroit comes from the metro area not the city itself. If you leave the suburbs not much would change.

Hi, really enjoy your channel ! This episode is Brilliant.... the amount of work that went into this was truly epic. You rock Geoff😊

Fun thought experiment. Great graphics. Love your videos

Awesome video! Great graphics!

I had this idea some years ago after seeing voting patterns by county rather than state. It would make a great deal of sense since looking at the county maps the cities were one color while the rest of the state were the other. It comes down to the two cultures and the rules people wish to live under (whether it is a real difference or not - another much longer discussion). Would be interesting to try.

I'm about to watch for the first time. But my first thought is knowing here in Eastern Washington, we'd have to pay 33% higher taxes to cover what we'd lose from Seattle and King County. I'm interested to see what this video is getting at.

Probably your best video Thanks

This is fascinating

I don't think this would shift the country one way or the other politically. Yes, city states would lean heavily left, but many of the rural states would lean right, including Northern California. It would really help the cities themselves to be able to raise financing independently of the surrounding state. Cities could concentrate on their own needs and services

America should already just realize and embrace the fact that city dwellers and rural folk dont mix politically or financially and learn after the german systems of city states and the autobahn

loved the video. The same movement as "Greater Idaho" but from the polar oposite side. Mostly the powerfull citys due not feel persucuted by the rural counties and so have no movement to break away. Would love to see a video about what would happen, good & bad, if rural counties that feel they have no representaion could vote to join a more rural adjoining state and the law was such that they did not need the vote of their states legislatures or of the federal goverment. I think the changes would be fasinating and very different for differnent areas of the country.

Hmm interesting angle. Thanks, for the video. 👍

On the positive side, I think one of the great strengths of the USA is that it is decentralized. Most other countries have all their political corporate power concentrated in one city--London, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, Mexico City, Buenos Aires--with very little input from the other regions. The USA has several corporate, cultural, and political capitals (Texas itself has 2 or more) that cause some tension but also aid in stability. There isn't just on elite deciding everything for everyone, and you can move to somewhere that more fits your outlook...Also, in our current system, the rural and resource-producing areas have more political power proportional to their importance to the economy, and that's a good thing, even when I don't agree with everything coming out of Red state politics.

It won't work well. I think the 2nd largest city that each metro leaves behind in each state would develop rapidly forming their own urban cities and new metros, while the original separate metros themselves might lose population.

This video captured a significant part of my brain. 😂 Thank you! I think about this far too often.

Honestly, I've argued-- theoretically-- that this would be advantageous for us to do, though I know it will never work. But...I think major cities should control their own affairs more closely, and I think rural places are so different from major cities in so many ways culturally and ideologically that it might be better to let each police their own needs. The fact that rural places could then compete in their own way would make them not feel so subservient to city politics. Politicians could then more accurately, hopefully, fight for needs that are specific to their region

I wouldn't say that they should be made into entirely new states. But maybe there should be like some new status for them like "Sector of New York" or "Metropolis of Los Angeles". Then the cities can have their own rules and regulations apart from the rest of the state. But I don't see every big city getting this type of status, I would say NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Miami getting it, those cities are famous for being economic, political, and cultural hubs in the US.

This is a surprisingly good idea

Very interesting vid! "I'm from Jersey" and just want to say you are spot on splitting NJ between "the city" and Philly. We've always been pulled in one direction or the other, yet weirdly unified in that. If put to a referendum, I think everyone would agree it made perfect sense and yet not actually want to do it.

good editing

This would be beneficial for Missouri, where the state government is essentially at war with Kansas City and St. Louis.

I completely agree with cities becoming individual states. Trouble is that cities are NOT terrorized by rest of the area state, the rural areas are terrorized by the cities.

Would it be possible for you to share a map of the states, or at least list the cities that are split off?

This could be interesting !

Cool video, Geoff!! Interesting idea and it would remedy several problems, not the least of which is the perception of many people that their representatives don't really represent them or their interests left, right, and center. It might even cool some of the secession fever which flares from time to time. It would also address the serious (and growing) large urban and NOT-large-urban divide. However, like you, I don't see this happening soon unless some unusual leadership is able to sell the idea to the American public. I have also wondered about the urban megaregions becoming states rather than just the city-states. I could see where that could be a bigger challenge as many of these places don't yet identify as united regions and the fact you are just dealing with many more people. But who knows what the next decades will bring.

Ngl, while I am a big fan of this channel, considering how vicious and extremist the two parties are, radically redistributing the borders of the states to favor either party would be an incredibly bad idea.

great video! I bet people will still comment and complain about cities and states though 😅

Another complicating factor is how to divide up the state's obligations. They would argue about how pension and debt obligations are handled.

84 states?!?! Won't somebody please, think of the Star Spangled Banner? Betsy Ross is gonna go nuts!

Trust me when I say. The current state of Illinois would love for the entire Chicago area become their own state. They have nothing in common with the rest of the state

You should make more videos like this one looking into more natural subdivisions of North America! Of cause, as you said, it is impossible to do anything with statehood or any border changes with the current political climate, but it is interesting to imagine optional states/countries. I have sometimes thought that USA and Canada should have been divided differently. Here is my suggestion to how to mix up and divide USA and Canada in four similar size countries based on current state borders, geographic areas, and cultural divisions: Atlantic-Arctic: Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, population 101 mill, area 6.4 mill.sq.km. Midwest-Prairies: Alberta, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Manitoba, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Saskatchewan, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Wyoming, population 88 mill, area 4.9 mill.sq.km. Pacific-Mountain: Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, New Mexico, Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Yukon, population 79 mill, area 5 mill.sq.km. South-Gulf: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, US Virgin Islands, population 103 mill, area 1.8 mill.sq.km.

Great video, but House seats aren’t proportioned based on an “average” amount. You would have to recalculate how the 435 House reps would be apportioned using the Huntington-Hill method.

City States would be neat I can't say for sure if it would be better, but if I had the power to snap my fingers and make this happen I would

I love Geography ❤

we should also make them like tokyo. tokyo has different wards, which operate like completely independant cities under a provincial (or, for the US, state) government. ofc US cities have a lot more crime, homelessness, pollution, etc than tokyo but splitting metro areas like this seems to have worked there.

I support county breakups. So Clark County, NV which is 3/4ths of state doesn’t have too much power. Many cities can also be counties like found in VA

Interesting. I can imagine the mass shifting of residents to align with their life. 🙋🏼

Fantastic analysis! Well done. Can't tell you how much I enjoy your episodes. Yes I agree, give Puerto Rico full statehood along with the benefits and responsibilities therein. With DC......I don't know. Best regards.

The follow-on is likely that the whole political setup would be reformed into something else, we might also imagine that the rump rural statelets would join up with other rural statelets, and the combination would make at least multi-party democracy with leveling seats essential, otherwise the rural states would consistently be underrepresented. I think this is one of the three big things that would make the U.S. Much bigger than it currently is, another would be doing either NAWAPA or GRAND, and the third would be building out large vacuum train connections between the big urban region states.

Very well laid out thought processes. Geographically this premise is highly logical but as you demonstrated within the electoral college votes, equal representation throughout the nation would lean heavily towards urban centers. Thus illustrates the geniuos of the electoral college that distributes equal representation nationally. Very good video. Very thought provocing and insiteful!

Ngl it never felt like you reached the meat of the video and just skimmed it. Especially for multi state cities and their benfits. Or how you got rid of new jersey

See this the type of video I wish Raleigh-Durham was 1 metro It should be not the split 😭

I would offer that the states are held hostage by the major cities within them. This is why counties in California and Colorado have talked about session from their respective states.

This could only work if we changed the Federal Union to be more of a federation than a central government. Senators would be more like delegates or ambassadors than lawmakers. The states would need more self-rule being in essence independent countries united into a federation. Similar to the European Union or the United States under the Articles of Confederation.

You forgot Milwaukee and Salt Lake City. 2.8 million live in the Provo-SLC-Ogden Metro. They consider SLC and Provo 2 different metros but they blend together now. Driving north on I-15 the metro starts in Payson and doesn’t end until you’re past Ogden… roughly 160 miles of bumper to bumper traffic. Outside of the Boston to Washington DC corridor it’s the longest metro I’ve ever driven through. Everyone is crammed between the mountains to the east and 2 lakes to the west(Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake). Logan is cut off from the metro by a few miles but it’ll blend into everything in the next 20 years. Most people have no clue how huge the SLC area is and how fast it’s grown since the Olympics. Milwaukee metro is 2.1 million. Madison metro of 900,000 touches Milwaukee’s metro so call it 3 million… and since they both touch the Rockford metro and Chicago metro that totals 13,000,000 million.

I wouldn't dismiss this out of hand. I can state for a fact that although the Detroit metro area didn't meet your 2 million threshold, the majority of us in western Michigan resent the sway Detroit area politics has on the entire state.

I imagine this would be similar to the map that would result from the civil war that tim pool is always saying is coming anytime now

You forgot the most important detail. Which states would NOT shrink as you brought the 2mln. threshold LOWER? This would tell you in what states the maximum of population density is low, i.e. which states are against cities, period.

Being born and raised in (southern) New Jersey, north jersey and south jersey are already pretty much two different states entirely so no one would miss it anyway 😅

They can be city states, fantastic idea. however I believe it should only include the city boundaries and not the metro area boundaries, there is still an obvious urban/Suburban divide.

Raleigh-Durham is now over 2,000,000 people.

if major cities would be states then what would their major city be?

Video title is "Why Every Major U.S. City Should Be Its Own State" but the conclusion is the exact opposite of that.

Most rural areas rely on the major metros to sustain them fiscally. If that Seattle state ever formed, the remaining Washington would have a hard time keeping the roads maintained. Much as the rural areas denigrate the cities, they are the hubs of economic activity and revenues.

What’s the name of the song used in the video ?

Crazy!

Something to consider is that rural areas of states such as Oregon get a lot of subsidy from their urban areas. These rural areas rely on this subsidy to keep themselves economically relevant and out of poverty. One could say "well if these states break away, it would allow industries like timber to return and bring economic viability to the region", however, this doesn't just apply to the basic economy. Roads for instance are not sufficiently funded by local funds.

I think they may all sound great on paper, but in practice dividing people into groups rarely helps solve problems.

I'd say it's less the cities being held hostage by the rest and more the opposite way...

I wish this was true for Sydney Aus. More focus would be put on rural areas while Sydney could have the same attention it had before + more.

I'm not sure the political results would favor conservatives. Nearly all the new states would be controlled by liberals. The House and Senate would both become lopsided.

Those 34 new states are looking at years, maybe decades of legal battles.

Why is Bethel so far from the rest of Alaska?

Each state gets an EC per senator, and then the rest is based on population. So each state always has at least 3

I stand with working with what we got instead of trying to break it up. as said, doing this kind of thing would split the country even more in a negative way. It would overshadow the few virtuous positives.

We need 3 more states to get to 53 total states. Then we would truly be indivisible.

And if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon.

The total would actually be 83 because while you're adding 34 city-states, then New Jersey ends up going away. Though I guess the 84th state would be Puerto Rico because they should be a state.

Great idea ... should also redraw the states boundaries as they are arbitrary anyway based on the politics of when they entered the union ... probably should dilate the boundaries a little

Fight beaver Geography you won’t

Make the case for DC to become a state or retrocess back into MD. Pls.

As a philadelphian I support this plan however, on behalf of all Philadelphia we don't want any part of new jersey they can do their own thing.

D.C. was partitioned off separately to avoid the problem of it being a state

This would make things much better politically, especially in the areas of New York, LA, SF, Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago. Those ten cities are a plague upon the other residents of their states, and should not be trying to impose their catastrophic ideologies on people who don't want to join their circus. Let them govern themselves and leave sane people a lone.

Question, is this problem with states only a US problem, or could most other countries do this as well with urban areas. For example, should Toronto separate from Ontario or Munich separate from Bavaria or Shanghai separate from Jiangsu? But similar to the US, capitals often form their own territory.

Amen brother! I would argue that entire metro areas should be their own states.

Sounds very similar to BC scenario in Canada. If Vancouver and Victoria split from BC it’d shrivel up and disappear because of its heavy reliance to the other industries in the province. Even though they absolutely hate what is going on (example the old growth controversy (lumber), oil and gas, mining) it’s these industries keep the cities afloat. Probably would still make bank from HQ corporate taxes but probably nothing from the industry sites itself.

Most of the people and wealth would be concentrated in the city-states. Money talks.

I’d put the threshold at 5 mil rather than 2 mil

Hi Geoff, I moved to Dallas nearly 5 yrs ago from Atlanta. There is an influx of mostly Floridians & Californians moving to this city. CA is a liberal, democratic state. FL is a conservative, republican state. Rent and mortgages have skyrocketed. Additionally, jobs are requiring more skills and paying less. How do you think the differing political stances of CA & FL will redevelop Dallas in the next decade or two?

The other thing is that the 34 city-states would be much, much, much wealthier than the remaining states. The tax base and economic activity would make the 34 states much richer and be able to offer much higher standards of living, so it would end up harming what remained of the original states substantially. A better scenario (and maybe future video idea?!) would be to redraw the current 50 states such that they had equal population, as closely as possible, along county lines.

I disagree with you about Washington DC becoming a state. However, I do believe Puerto Rico should gain statehood….maybe. DC was never intended to be a state, it was never truly intended for people to actively live there. As neither was our government designed for people to make careers out of them. It was designed for regular folk to be able to contribute to the governing authority within this country and it is a damn shame what it’s come to. On that note, I think too many Americans are sick of the “Rich men north of Richmond” and the city state mess would cause the country to be fully run by the rich men north of Richmond. It’s a cool concept, it’s interesting to think about, but it’s also rather dystopian. I would rather see our politics here become more middle ground and stop being so extreme. On that note, I found it incredible how most of my life is based in rural America and the smaller cities that are not big enough for statehood, even the Richmond metro and Hampton Roads metro area of Virginia isn’t big enough. I find it incredibly nauseating to put up with people in the cities and deal with traffic and just life in general, in a city of 100k.

The problem with this is that states use cities to pay for the standard of living in rural areas. The individualistic mindset of rural people and major news outlets only focusing on crime and violence helps them live in a delousion of not needing their states cities even if actual crime statistics are lower than the national average.

Somehow, I doubt a state capital would want to break away from its own state.

YES! I've been throwing around the idea of the City-State, with it's own electoral votes, for years. It would make perfect sense and would stop the disenfranchisement of rural voters in states like New York, Illinois, California, etc...

As a leftist Illinoisan outside of the Chicago metro, I REALLY don't want Chicago to be its own state. If it was, Illinois would go so hard right it would make Florida look like the Castro.

While locally this would be liberating to rural people on the state level, it would be cripeling on the federal level adding senator and congressmen. There are pros and cons. I do think the US should be more flexible on adding or splitting States though.

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