the downsides are the segregation of minorities into urban enclaves, the prohibitive housing prices, and, in some cases (Connecticut), the extreme racial disparity in public education funding.

if the US was not a homogenous imperial core, but rather a cluster of regions subject to uneven development due to minority exploitation, new england would be the administrative district of the metropole. so it has treats and elite educational institutions, museums, infrastructure and it's full of people who think they are better than everyone else by virtue of proximity to the extracted and hoarded wealth of hinterlands and internal colonies.

but, as in america, the snake has been eating itself for a while, so the wealth of the district is contracting further to megawealthy fortress enclaves while the rest of it degrades and is stripped of assets.

but hey. lots of passenger rail.