What is the New York Tri-State Area?

The New York tri-state area is just part of the Mid-Atlantic region encompassing all of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and West Virginia. In the late nineteenth century this region was called “typically American” because of its vast ethnic diversity and a tolerant acceptance of religious pluralism stemming from the region’s settlement by Dutch, Swedes, English Catholics, and Quakers.

In the early part of the nineteenth century New York and Pennsylvania emerged as the most populous states in the region. The entire Northeast, including the New England states, evolved as the country’s most important trading and industrial centers.
A welcoming immigration policy toward German, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, and others, helped transform and add to the diversity of region. Today, the New York metropolitan area continues to be the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States, with the largest foreign-born population of any metropolitan region in the world.
By the twentieth century, New York City with its skyscrapers, subways, and concentration of business, became the exemplification of American cultural and economic power. The New York City metropolitan region was recognized as one of the most important economic regions in the world.
In the twenty-first century it continues to be the center of many industries, including finance, international trade, new and traditional media, real estate, fashion, entertainment,  tourism, biotechnology, law, manufacturing, and education. The New York metropolitan region's higher education network comprises hundreds of colleges and universities, including Columbia University, Princeton University, Yale University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, all of which have been ranked among the top 40 in the world.
As well, this tri-state geographic area is the largest metropolitan area in the world. It covers New York City (the most populous city in the United States since 1790), Long Island, and the Mid and Lower Hudson Valley in the state of New York, it also includes the five largest cities in New Jersey: Newark, Jersey City,
Paterson , Elizabeth, Edison, and their vicinities. The area circumscribes six of the seven largest cities in Connecticut: Bridgeport, New Haven, Stamford, Waterbury, Norwalk, Danbury, and their vicinities.
This metropolitan area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world, and the single largest in North America. The New York metropolitan areas population is larger than that of the state of New York and is home to seven of the 25 wealthiest counties in the United States by median household income. There are dozens of urban areas throughout the United States, not all of them defined by adjoining states. Some cover a small area, others vast stretches of land. But there is no question about what the New York tri-state area is—the most dominant in
the entire country.