This article irks me a bit, partly as a New Yorker who isn't from the city. It's not even that ATB is entirely wrong, but it's that he's glossing over something complicated or nuanced with his very ATB way of dismissal. Which, judging by the comments here/on the article, is how the natives of all the other named spots feel, too.
ATB seems like he does have grains of a good idea, but his signature style of FUCK EVERYTHING I DON'T LIKE doesn't really translate well into discussing this stuff. And if it's abrasive when he's discussing music and movies, it's even more so when he's hand-waving groups of thousands or millions of people.
That said, New York really is a lot different outside of the city's borders, and there's a lot of resentment in some spots over how the city gets all of the attention and political representation when they give little to no shits about the entire rest of the state. Western and Northern New York in particular get the shaft on that, though I know Long Island has a lot of bitterness about how resources all tend to funnel towards the city (even though almost 8 million people are on the island vs. 9 million in the city).