Correct me if I'm misunderstanding, as federation is a newish concept for me.
As the instances of the verse are currently structured, geography-centric communities would be difficult to organize. (In my cursory searches, I'm having trouble locating stuff like lemmy.co.us.)
But one thing that I sorely miss about the old days was that you could call in to a bbs, or visit a forum populated by "locals" and discuss all manner of topics.
Would definitely be happy to learn how wrong I am!