>>333
Late to the party, I know.
tl;dr: NEO is primarily urban/suburban, mostly just typical rust belt communities. Also, Cleveland is where Trump will be given the Republican nomination. I can't fucking wait.
Personally, I've lived in many of the most populous states, and I love it here. I'm definitely a four-seasons man and I can't stand the prevailing culture in most of the country. But, admittedly, this place, like WV/PA and other places I've been, I'm often thinking aloud, "this place sure is nice, shame about the people who already live here."
The weather in NEO is something like the second-highest in the country after Seattle in terms of precipitation, so a lot of people who say they hate it here complain about the prevailing cloud cover — see embedded. It's not that big of an exaggeration.
Farming in the area is present, of course, but there's evidently a higher percentage of orchards, horse ranches, and other kinds of atypical agriculture. Definitely a lot less soya/corn than the rest of the state. Mostly it was the state's industrial center and every city is or was centered on a major heavy industry like steel, rubber, or transportation. A lot of that is gone now (otherwise we wouldn't call it a "rust belt") and only very recently has there been any kind of economic recovery (which is relative, keep in mind things have been shitty here job-wise since the 70's).
The area was originally colonized by people from Connecticut (which gives a lot of the older housing a very New England coastal vibe with large, fully-enclosed covered front porches being an extremely common element on new houses right up through the 1940's), where the rest of the state was predominantly filled in by Virginians. During the industrial boom in the 1880-1950 period, many Germans, Eastern Europeans, Irish, and Italians populated the area along with migrants from West Virginia and the southern states who were looking for work. I'm not sure when the Amish (read: German) movement made it this far west, but it's a significant part of Post too long. Click here to view the full text.