After reading Patchwork Nation, I was very curious to see exactly where my home county fit into the 12 community types that were laid out in the book. I came across this website: http://www.patchworknation.org/county/choose, which allows you to plug in your state and county name. Then it comes up with the type of community you live in, along with some statistics about your county and a hardship index that measures how difficult life is for an average resident of your county.
To be honest, after reading the descriptions of each category of community, I did not feel that my county easily fell into just one category. I found that my county, Middlesex County in Massachusetts, fell under the "Monied 'Burbs" category, which surprised me in comparison to the results for other counties in Massachusetts. A majority of the state actually fell under the "Campus and Careers" category: this makes sense because these areas have a great number of colleges and universities and potential for innovation. My county seemed more like a mix of a few different categories, but I suppose it makes sense that it fell under "Monied 'Burbs" because although I don't consider some towns and cities that surround me as well-off and wealthy, I believe that my area would be seen as a nice one when putting it into the perspective of the entire country.
7 comments:
Good point Cris. Counties are convenient but imperfect units of analysis. Many counties are very diverse.
Example: Essex County NJ includes Newark (median family income $41K) and Livingston (median family income $143K)
Another example: Collier County Fl includes Naples (median family income $121K and Immokalee (median family income $22K)
I don't feel like my county could fit into this either. Mine is Atlantic County, NJ and we got Industrial Metropolis when our biggest town is Atlantic City with only 40,000 people. Our "second" option was Evangelical Epicenter. Is it me, or does that just not make sense at all?
I do think the authors do a good job acknowledging the drawbacks of using counties, and that while the entire county might not fall under one specific category, the category is what fits it best. Obviously it is an imperfect system. But I think it is an interesting and new way of analyzing America, and is much more specific and better than a state by state, blue or red analysis.
I agree with Amy's sentiment. As the author mentioned in the 80's there was a study that broke up America into different sub-Americas and the analysis was too far-reaching and broad. I like the way each area is broken down so that you can understand the culture, people, and what drives politics in the area. It sheds light on parts of America that are often forgotten.
I also looked up Multnomah County, which is where Portland, OR is and was not surprised to find that our Hardship index was 22 and we are considered Monied Burbs. However, I had no idea that the largest religious group was Catholic. Really interesting!
This is interesting. My county does not really fit any of the descriptions either. But to the credit of Chinni and Gimpel, it is difficult to create twelve catagories for all US counties to fit into. For the most part they do as best as possible with such a difficult catagorical task, however I believe they could have paid more attention to race and the role it plays towards voting and party affiliation. I spoke with an individual who works down in redistricting reguarding this book and he had James Gimpel as a professor in College. He said his office is just down the road from the RNC!
Post a Comment