New England
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The New England region of the United States is located in the northeastern corner of the country. It includes the states Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

The region's most populous city, and historically its business and cultural center, is Boston. During the 20th century, urban expansion has also made the New York metropolitan area an important economic influence on southwestern Connecticut. 

New England is the oldest clearly-defined region of the United States, unique among U.S. geographic regions in that it is also a former political entity. Originally inhabited by indigenous peoples, English settlers, fleeing religious persecution in Europe, arrived nearly four centuries ago at the beginning of the 17th century. It was one of the first regions of the original North American British colonies to demonstrate ambitions of independence from the Crown in the 18th century, although it would later collectively oppose the War of 1812 with Great Britain. In the 19th century, it played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States, became a source of some of the first examples of American literature and philosophy, and showed the first signs of the effects of the Industrial Revolution in North America.

Together, the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions are generally referred to as the Northeastern region of the United States.

Population
In 1910, 6,552,681 people lived in New England. Today, the total population of New England is 13,922,517. If New England were one state, the population would rank 5th in the nation, behind Florida. The total area in this scenario (181,440 sq km) would rank 20th behind North Dakota.

Regional population layout

Southern New England
The bulk of the region's population is concentrated in southern New England, which comprises Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The most populous state is Massachusetts, with the population centered mostly around its political and cultural capital, Boston. Western Massachusetts is less densely populated that eastern Massachusetts. The resulting effect is a cultural divide between urban New Englanders and rural New Englanders living in Western Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

Connecticut is more of a cultural paradox compared to the other states in the region. The southwestern part of the state (which contains about 1/2 the state's population and can roughly be drawn as everything south and west of an imaginary line from just north of Danbury to New Haven) is essentially a suburb of or a part of the New York metropolitan area. This area has grown rapidly in population since 1970, as many corporations formerly headquartered in Manhattan moved to nearby Fairfield County to take advantage of lower taxes while still staying within the general region, bringing jobs and "New York transplants." Therefore, culturally, this region of the state is more like that of neighboring New York City than the rest of the New England region. The remainder of the state (and other half of its population) is very similar culturally to that of the neighboring states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The wealth in western Connecticut, the Hartford and New Haven suburbs and the shoreline all contribute to the state having the state's highest per capita income of any in the United States.

An example of this cultural dichotomy can be found in residents' allegiance to sports teams. Western Connecticut residents may root for either Boston or New York teams, unlike other New England residents who tend to be staunchly loyal to Boston teams. Television broadcasts in Hartford and New Haven typically give equal coverage to sports teams in both Boston and New York.

Coastal New England
The coastline is more urban than western New England, which is typically rural, even in urban states like Massachusetts. These characteristics of the region's population are due mainly to historical factors; the original colonists settled mostly on the coastline of Massachusetts Bay. The only state without access to the Atlantic Ocean, Vermont, is also the least-populated. After nearly 400 years, the region still maintains, for the most part, its historical population layout.

New England's coast is dotted with urban centers, such as Portland, Portsmouth, Boston, New Bedford, Fall River, Providence, New Haven, and Bridgeport, as well as smaller cities, like Newburyport, Gloucester, Biddeford, Bath, and New London. The smaller fishing towns, like Gloucester, are popular tourist attractions, as they tend to retain their historical character, and often have colorful pasts.

Cape Cod, also a popular tourist attraction, is lined with sandy beaches and dotted with bed and breakfast tourist lodgings. The picturesque and rugged coast of Maine is best known for its beauty and for lobster. New Hampshire, which has the smallest coastline of all of the coastal New England states, is home to Hampton Beach, also frequented by visitors to the region.



Urban New England

Boston is considered to be the cultural and historical capital of New England.
 
Providence is the second-largest city in New England and claims the largest contiguous area of National Historic Society-designated buildings in the U.S.

Worcester is the third-largest city in New England and by far the largest urban area in the more rural mid- to northwestern part of the region.  Three of the four most densely populated states in the United States are in New England. In order, the four most densely populated states are: New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Indeed, southern New England forms an integral part of the BosWash megalopolis, a conglomeration of urban centers that spans from Boston to Washington, D.C.

The Greater Boston metropolitan area has a total population of approximately 5.8 million.