Cultural Regions of the United States and Canada

Cultural geographers typically divide the United States and Canada into vernacular regions defined by shared settlement history, dialect, religion, and everyday identity rather than by formal political boundaries. Geographer Wilbur Zelinsky's influential 1973 study The Cultural Geography of the United States mapped such regions — including New England, the Midland, the South, the Midwest, the Great Plains, the Southwest, and California and the Pacific — based on evidence such as historical settlement patterns, vernacular house types, place names, and dominant religious denominations.