Wednesday, January 15, 2014

America in 62 Demographics

So, I'm taking an Urban Geography class, and after reading something, I stumbled upon the PRIZM Clusters, which separates America in dozens of separate categories. It's really cool to see this because you can classify how neighborhoods are made up and what kind of changes neighborhoods go through. As America changes, the classifications change too, with 18 (Young Influentials) being described as "the last of the Yuppies", and Cluster 45 (Single City Blues) the type of lifestyle with cities in the East predominantly being the type of soul-sucking transient lifestyle that give cities a bad name. The grimy and gritty, the type with a seedy liquor store right below a flophouse. Or those little apartments as seen in Rocky. And cities can have more than one, there's both #46 (Hispanic Mix) and #1 (Blue Blood Estates) right in Houston, though Houston is an anomaly in general of cities: it is expansive land-wise, younger than East Coast cities, and with lax zoning rules, so as a result you end up with multiple CBDs, neighborhoods close to the city core that are not only single family homes but also filthy rich. It doesn't take into account America's past (where the now-aged "Gray Collars" are), nor does cover Europe, but man does it cover a lot of ground.

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