American Communities Project: Mapping US Counties
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Author Topic: American Communities Project: Mapping US Counties  (Read 1311 times)
eric82oslo
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« on: July 12, 2015, 03:22:49 PM »

Here's a neat map which takes demographical data from every single US county and then analyze them to figure out which characteristic best represents each county. They've used 15 different characteristics, though a couple of them are very similar. It's hard to get a view of Alaska & Hawaii unfortunately, even if you zoom out.

http://project.wnyc.org/acp/#5/38.393/-94.658 (close up)
http://project.wnyc.org/acp/#4/38.34/-94.66 (zoomed out)

Here are a list of all 15 characteristics and which state best represent the characteristic on the map.

Military Posts: North Carolina, Virginia
Graying America: Oregon, Maine, Wyoming
Aging Farmlands: North Dakota
Working Class Country: West Virginia
Rural Middle America: Iowa, Illinois, Indiana
Evangelical Hubs: Oklahoma, Kentucky
Middle Suburbs: Massachusetts, New Jersey
Exurbs: New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maryland
African American South: Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi
College Towns: Rhode Island
Native American Lands: Arizona, South Dakota, Montana
Urban Suburbs: Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, California
LDS Enclaves: Utah, Idaho
Hispanic Centers: Texas, New Mexico, California
Big Cities: California, Texas

Pretty interesting stuff. Smiley

Ooops. I was planning to post this in the Trends subforum, sorry. Maybe some moderator could relocate it? Thanks.
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Boston Bread
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« Reply #1 on: July 12, 2015, 05:21:16 PM »

Odd that Graying America is that prevalent in the West. Isn't the East older?
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Boston Bread
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« Reply #2 on: July 12, 2015, 05:25:02 PM »

Also, that's a lot of college towns. Canada generally doesn't cities whose culture is dominated by a school, although Waterloo where I live does have a college town image.
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VPH
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« Reply #3 on: July 17, 2015, 01:22:41 PM »

The college towns thing seems sketchy. Shawnee County may have Washburn University but it is not a college town...
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RI
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« Reply #4 on: July 17, 2015, 04:49:35 PM »

lol at Spokane being a college town. I'd have made up a few more categories including "tourist traps" or something like that.
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Clarko95 📚💰📈
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« Reply #5 on: July 17, 2015, 06:50:43 PM »
« Edited: July 17, 2015, 07:17:55 PM by Clarko95 »

They screwed up the Chicago area so badly. Porter County, Indiana is exurban. You have to drive through tons of cornfields to reach rapidly-exurban-ing satellite cities like Portage and Valparaiso. Will and Lake Counties in Illinois are middle suburbs; they connect directly to the similarly-dense suburbs of Cook County.

Also, most of the counties that have smaller cities in Indiana are not "middle suburbs". They're still more rural than anything else.


Also, in terms of the state as a whole and not just the number of counties classified in a certain way, Illinois better represents Middle and Urban suburbs. It's "Middle America" in that Illinois is a fairly accurate representation of America as a whole, but the state's more urban character (obviously dominated by Chicago and its suburbs) puts it apart from places like Indiana and Ohio and doesn't make it "rural middle America".

[/nitpicking]
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Republican Michigander
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« Reply #6 on: August 02, 2015, 08:38:19 PM »

I don't live in a "Middle Suburb." My county is either rural middle America or Exurbs depending on your definition. 
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DS0816
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« Reply #7 on: September 05, 2015, 09:10:56 AM »

I live in Wayne County (county seat is Detroit), Michigan, and am among the "Big Cities" counties on that map. I make annual trips to Larimer County (county seat is Fort Collins) in Colorado—the best bellwether county in that state—and it is a "College Towns" county. It's always good to get some experience outside one's comfort zone…and I appreciate this map.
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Figueira
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« Reply #8 on: September 05, 2015, 05:56:04 PM »

Counties are probably too large of a unit for this sort of thing, but it's still pretty interesting.
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