PRIZM reimagined America as repeating lifestyle-neighborhood clusters rather than states

Evidence

The initial definition of the forty clusters obviously involved considerable subjectivity on Robbin’s part, but from the beginning he expected the clusters to evolve and grow more precise. In his vision of America, traditional demarcations, like state lines, didn’t have much meaning; to drive across the nation was to visit not places like Kansas or Iowa, but rather local chapters of clusters like “Shotguns & Pickups,” “Gold Coasts,” and so on. While some (like “Sharecroppers” or “Industrial”) were found in only certain regions, in general the same neighborhoods, as he saw it, repeated across the land, with any local variations being merely cosmetic. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 608

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the conceptual foundation of PRIZM’s neighborhood-cluster classification system.
• XREF: connects to: PRIZM in 1978 divided all Americans into forty demographic clusters by ZIP code — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 604; ZIP-code clustering replaced single-variable demographics as the defining marketing category — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 605; PRIZM’s cluster profiles linked consumption habits directly to party voting patterns — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 607 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Cluster analysis grouped neighborhoods by demographic and lifestyle similarity of residents. #corroborates (0.95) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 601