I only ever hear this phrase in an American context. Are your states more likely to meet with 3 at a point or something? I never hear “quadstate” or “bistate” area?
It’s a mathematical property of regions of a 2D space that 3 will naturally meet at a point, but 4 or higher have to be contrived to meet at a point. In the US we do have the 4 corners, which is where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, so there is precedent.
Theu don’t actually meet at a point, but suburbs in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut all feed into and support New York City. We do have a couple of “bi-state” areas like St. Louis, Kansas City, and Cincinnati. It’s the result of our cities rising into prominence after political boundaries were drawn up, whereas most major European cities had the modern political boundaries drawn up around them.
The only cotoes that i would really describe as “tri-state” are NYC, Washington (since the District of Columbia is a seperate entity than Maryland and Virginia) Philadelphia, and Chicago. Philadelphia is the only one of these where the 3 states actually meet at a single point though.
Thanks, that’s an interesting perspective. Cities developing somewhat independently of state / county lines. Here in the UK it seems our counties are so much smaller and irregular that it seems like a phrase that’s never found much use
I only ever hear this phrase in an American context. Are your states more likely to meet with 3 at a point or something? I never hear “quadstate” or “bistate” area?
It’s a mathematical property of regions of a 2D space that 3 will naturally meet at a point, but 4 or higher have to be contrived to meet at a point. In the US we do have the 4 corners, which is where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, so there is precedent.
Theu don’t actually meet at a point, but suburbs in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut all feed into and support New York City. We do have a couple of “bi-state” areas like St. Louis, Kansas City, and Cincinnati. It’s the result of our cities rising into prominence after political boundaries were drawn up, whereas most major European cities had the modern political boundaries drawn up around them.
The only cotoes that i would really describe as “tri-state” are NYC, Washington (since the District of Columbia is a seperate entity than Maryland and Virginia) Philadelphia, and Chicago. Philadelphia is the only one of these where the 3 states actually meet at a single point though.
Thanks, that’s an interesting perspective. Cities developing somewhat independently of state / county lines. Here in the UK it seems our counties are so much smaller and irregular that it seems like a phrase that’s never found much use
https://jonathan.rawle.org/hyperpedia/counties/images/big74.gif
“Quad cities” bordering Illinois and Iowa.
There’s the quad cities