About

In an age of American self-sorting and bubble realities, there is no good way to understand the different worlds that people in the United States call their homes. Even within the same state, community differences can be stark. The differences between a metropolitan area and a rural locale 50 miles away can be greater than that same city and another metro area 500 miles away. These different traits often are not properly understood in the policy world where problems are frequently judged by looking at national or state phenomenon or data. We need a better way of understanding the different types of communities that make up America so we can develop new and better ways of recognizing and measuring what works and what does not.

This is what American Communities Project (ACP) has been doing since its founding in 2012.

A combined social science/journalism effort based at the Michigan State University School of Journalism, the ACP uses a vast array of data – from election results and economic numbers to consumer surveys and polling – to break communities into different types for analysis. The primary point: Even in the age of the web, people in different places experience the world very differently.

Working with academics, the ACP used a wide range of different factors – everything from income to race and ethnicity to education to religious affiliation – and a clustering technique to identify 15 types of counties, everything from Big Cities to Aging Farmlands. It has mapped those types to show where the country’s political, socioeconomic, and cultural fissures are.

The result is an unprecedented growing attempt to understand the subtleties and complexities of the United States as the country reimagines its future and its place in the world. The Project correlates economic and demographic data to election results and consumer data to see what is moving those different communities and to see who is struggling and who is thriving in the 21st- century United States.

The ACP’s 15 community types:
African American South, Aging Farmlands, Big Cities, College Towns, Evangelical Hubs,
Exurbs, Graying America, Hispanic Centers, LDS Enclaves, Middle Suburbs,
Military Posts, Native American Lands, Rural Middle America, Urban Suburbs, Working Class Country