American Communities Project

A combined social science/journalism effort based at The George Washington University’s School of Media & Public Affairs, 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, socio-economic 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.