Our Patchwork Nation: The Surprising Truth About the "Real" America

by Dante Chinni, James G. Gimpel

A revolutionary new way to understand America's complex cultural and political landscape, with proof that local communities have a major impact on the nation's behavior-in the voting booth and beyond.

In a climate of culture wars and tremendous economic uncertainty, the media have often reduced America to a simplistic schism between red states and blue states. In response to that oversimplification, journalist Dante Chinni teamed up with political geographer James Gimpel to launch the Patchwork Nation project, using on-the-ground reporting and statistical analysis to get past generalizations and probe American communities in depth. The result is Our Patchwork Nation , a refreshing, sometimes startling, look at how America's diversities often defy conventional wisdom.

Looking at the data, they recognized that the country breaks into twelve distinct types of communities, and old categories like "soccer mom" and "working class" don't matter as much as we think. Instead, by examining Boom Towns, Evangelical Epicenters, Military Bastions, Service Worker Centers, Campus and Careers, Immigration Nation, Minority Central, Tractor Community, Mormon Outposts, Emptying Nests, Industrial Metropolises, and Monied Burbs, the authors demonstrate the subtle distinctions in how Americans vote, invest, shop, and otherwise behave, reflect what they experience on their local streets and in their daily lives. Our Patchwork Nation is a brilliant new way to debate and examine the issues that matter most to our communities, and to our nation.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Sociology, History, Political Science, Social Science, United States

336 pages, Hardcover

First published September 30, 2010

Reviews

[ALLEN · Rating 3 out of 5]

OUR PATCHWORK NATION (2010) is one of a number of lifestyle-segmentation books that were published in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. The assumption behind them is that red-and-blue-state distinctions are too simplistic and misleading (true, but an overworked thesis). According to the authors, every American locality can be typified by membership in one of twelve particular supergroups. Here are the groups, with a leading municipal example of each, in alphabetical order and by chapter:

BOOM TOWNS: EAGLE, COLORADO
CAMPUS AND CAREERS: ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN
EMPTYING NESTS: CLERMONT, FLORIDA
EVANGELICAL EPICENTERS: NIXA, MISSOURI
IMMIGRATION NATION: EL MIRAGE, ARIZONA
INDUSTRIAL METROPOLIS: PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
MILITARY BASTIONS: HOPKINSVILLE, KENTUCKY
MINORITY CENTRAL: BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA
MONIED BURBS: LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO
MORMON OUTPOSTS: BURLEY, IDAHO
SERVICE WORKER CENTERS: LINCOLN CITY, OREGON
TRACTOR COUNTRY: SIOUX CENTER, IOWA

Each chapter contains a magazine-style article about the city under discussion. But that’s only about half the book, which also contains largish chapters on “Politics” (making sense of the 2008 Obama victory, largely) and “Culture," although "culture" includes details like proximity to Starbuck's stores. A very long Appendix at the end of this book assigns every county or city in the USA to a cluster, with both primary and secondary designations drawn from the list above. Thus in Allegheny County, PA, Philadelphia (see above) is primarily an “Industrial Metropolis” but secondarily part of “Monied Burbs.” By the same token, the much smaller college town of Charlottesville, Virginia is assigned to “Boom Towns” first and “Campus and Careers" second.

There are problems with this type of segmentation, not least of which is that a dozen communities is not nearly enough to cover a nation as large and diverse as ours, even using two of them per locality. The Claritas Prizm marketing concern, which started this whole ball rolling nearly 40 years ago, has evolved a list of 68 segments, all the way from no. 1 (“Upper Crust”) to no. 68 (“Bedrock America”)*. Another drawback is the inefficiency of consulting a ten-year-old work based on twelve-year-old research. A minor gripe is that there’s only one color map, and it’s on the cover.

Personally, I think a much better book on how America got thataway is American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarita...

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book starts with an interesting premise: The tendency to try and divide the US into red and blue states misses out on the variety of American experiences that in fact exist. Unfortunately the authors of Our Patchwork Nation don't really accomplish their goal of showing that the categorization of red and blue states is insufficient because they go on to make 12 hard categories of different American experiences. The problem is not that the red-blue dichotomy doesn't account for the purple in between. The problem is trying to categorize the American experience at all and it doesn't matter if you split it up 2, 12, or 2000 ways.

There is also something rather unsatisfying about applying these categories at the county level. I understand the limitations of data at larger scale levels such as census tracts or blocks, but experiences within a single county can be so varied that in many cases you might have several experiences represented. It's one of the weaknesses of the choropleth mapping approach they took. You can only show each county as one category. This effectively disregards the nuance of experience the authors were supposedly trying to explore.

Finally, the reader is asked to put a lot of faith in the categories these authors come up with. I can't say I've visited even a quarter of the counties in the US and certainly not in a way that is meaningful. Nonetheless, when I look at how the counties I know well were categorized, in some cases I was left scratching my head. I wasn't surprised that most of the counties surrounding Marion County, Indiana (where Indianapolis is located) would be considered Monied Burbs. The one that got me really questioning their metrics was Delaware County, Indiana. Delaware County is home to Muncie and Ball State University. I spent 5 of the 7 years there. I was quite surprised to see Delaware County being called a Boom Town. Even from the text it's a bit unclear what the authors are calling Boom Towns, but from what I gather these are largely exurban outposts that experienced rapid housing growth in recent years. They had the rug pulled out from them when the housing bubble popped and the future of development in these places seems uncertain. Delaware County, while certainly a place that has opened up to long distance commuters to Indianapolis, was not some expansive plot of farmland prior to exurban expansion. There's a 20,000+ student campus, cities and town that have fairly well established industrial legacies, and an economic planning that is not entirely dependent on Indianapolis. I would have expected Delaware County to be a Campus and Career, Industrial Metropolis, Service Workers Center, or even Tractor Country before a Boom Town. The problem is the authors created a statistical metric that is only superficially grounded in just a few case examples.

I'm rambling a bit, but my point in this is that once you start comparing these categories to personal experience it can be quite difficult to have faith in their categorization of places you haven't personally experienced. Even if you accept that broad categorizations are fine and dandy, I have no faith in these categories being generally on target because they don't reflect the situation in the places I know.

This was a book best left unwritten.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've read The Nine Nations of North America, this book's premise will seem somewhat familiar. The authors attempt to define Americans through an ocean of cultural and economic data. Using this data they designate tweleve different community types, from Industrial Metropolises to Mormon Outposts, offering some explanation of how Americans experience the same country differently, which ultimately guides them to make different political choices. While Chinni expresses concern about the splintering of national goals, he does offer suggestions of how the federal government could offer targeted solutions based on the needs of the community type. This is already happening to some degree, of course, with programs like Head Start, but the problem is convincing the people in community types that don't have those needs to spend their tax dollars on communities that do.

While Chinni effectively argues that the need for this kind of cooperation is increasing, he doesn't offer much to help to the politicians who would actually have to create the programs and maneuver the money to support them. While "pork" and "earmarks" are popular dirty words to throw around during election years, politicians will continue to shy away from conducting the kinds of deals necessary to make sure each community type gets what it needs. Plus, the communities that hold the most swing voters will necessarily get the most attention, and according to Chinni, the community with the largest number of independents is also one of the wealthiest. The kind of financial attention lavished on that community type to continue to woo those voters will likely increase the gap between rich and poor. At any rate, this book certainly gives its readers a lot to digest and discuss.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Trying to analyze the country by breaking it into communities based on shared socioeconomic and religious factors is a very good idea. However, this book approaches it in a way that feels very simplistic. They only spending a few pages describing one location in each of the 12 communities they describe, and give only the most basis demographic information for each type.

One primary argument of the book is that you can't essentialize red states and blue state into one set of stereotypes, but the authors do that a lot for the community types they define--in many cases they give one-sentence answers for why a broad economic trend is affecting dozens of counties from Florida to North Dakota. This in spite of the fact that the authors admit it was extremely difficult to classify many counties that align strongly with more than one community type.

One other piece that was sort of odd is that they don't give any of their methodology until the appendix at the very end. This means that the divisions feel somewhat artificial while reading the book, since there is no explicit explanation of why exactly they differentiate (for example) one set of rural farming counties as "Emptying Nests" and another set of rural farming counties as "Tractor Country".

[David R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chinni and Gimpel's answer to the "American nations" blitz (e.g. Garreau's "Nine Nations", Woodward's "11 Nations) is underpowered and unconvincing. That Americans are readily divisible into computer-detectable geo- and psychodemographic clusters has long been known to market researchers, and anyone else who can perceive that various counties, zip codes, census tracts and neighborhoods may differ in consumer behavior (i.e. some are wealthy, some not). But to assume that these congeries of clusters are "nations" is a reach. And in fact Chinni and Gimpel's county-by-county overlays look suspiciously similar to the more plausible "nations" laid out by the others--nations based, it should be noted, on the basis of settlement and cultural antecedents. A last point: the book was written prior to the 2010 midterm congressional elections and the authors' political prognostications poorly matched electoral reality. This one was slightly interesting, but doesn't deliver the goods.

[J Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an analytic rundown of the nation’s differences, taken down to a county by county level. The findings show that there are 12 types of communities that make up the basis of our nation. Good insight is given into the history, politics, and economies of each location.

The book is an enjoyable read about why we are different. The author hopes that our society is one in transition rather than one that is falling apart. However, a common theme emerges from the most economically depressed areas in our nation. These regions are the least educated of the 12 social groups, their median income is typically below the national average, and the majority of residents adhere to a philosophy of self imposed ignorance.

These groups chose opinion over fact. They focus on preconceived world views rather than interaction with an easily accessed outside world. And while I did note some lessons the other social groups could learn from them, the behaviors were driven more by a desire for homogeneity.

While each of the 12 social groups had people from across the spectrum within their classes, only the aforementioned groups placed no value on cultured intellectual prowess. I was comforted by the fact that these backwater folks were few in number, but I also have come to accept the fact that they are a force of ignorance that has learned to project their power quite well in our political arenas. A sad fact remains… There’s no hope for democracy when ignorance is celebrated.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

A random library pick-up, this is an attempt to provide a more nuanced picture of America than just "red and blue," using statistics and narrative. The authors, a journalist and a professor of government, analyzed factors like income, gas prices, church attendance, etc. by county and found twelve clusters. They gave the twelve types of communities cute names like "Evangelical Epicenter" and "Boom Town." The book consists of brief profiles of a representative of each community type followed by comparisons of the economies, political leanings, and culture of each kind of place.

I like the idea of clustering the data in this way and using it to as background for better political analysis. That said, it didn't make for a very interesting book--there was something sort of bland and too-carefully measured about all the discussion here. One thing that did persistently strike me was how low the proportion of college graduates is nationally, and especially in some of these types of communities. I knew that my personal acquaintances reflected a higher-than-average level of college attendance, but had no idea by how much.

Check out the project's website, which has a lot of best information up front. Only if you find yourself wanting to go beyond it should you bother with the book, and in that case, avoid the ebook, in which the tables are too small to be read easily.

[Caren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very interesting ideas here. Rather than the simplistic red state/blue state scenario, the authors have divided the country into twelve community types with representative examples of each. In the back of the book is a list of every county in the USA and the first and second choice of what type each may represent. The authors are quick to concede that life is more complex than twelve "types" can reveal, but upon looking at my own county, I thought their description was spot-on. The twelve types are:1) boom towns 2)campus and careers, emptying nests, evangelical epicenters, immigration nation, industrial metropolis, military bastions, minority central, monied burbs, Mormon outposts, service worker centers, and tractor country. After descriptions of the places used as examples of each type, the end of the book turns to an evaluation of what these communities may expect in future developments for their economy, political outlook and the culture of each place. The authors speak of the challenges and strengths for each type and make tentative predictions about directions each community could take. My only very small quibble is the poor editing of the book, leading to some awkward sentence structures and even a few words left out...The book is meant to impart information, though, so whether it is elegantly written is , in the end, of no great consequence.

[Svelteassassin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does a great job of explaining differences in American culture, politics, and economics by classifying counties in America into 12 different community types, instead of just Red State/Blue State. Sounds dry and boring, but it's actually an easy read and quite fascinating. It follows the Freakonomics model of research done by an academic but the writing done by a journalist, so it it's rigorously researched but is not a boring academic tome.

[Jeff Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly great read about modern demographics and how they affect culture and politics. I figured a lot of it would be a rehash of what we see in the media, but the book really drills down into what the communities mean and how they impact each other and themselves. Definitely recommended on a number of levels.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had hopes that this book would be along the lines of an updated The Nine Nations of North America. The first section, outlining various American "segments", seemed similar, though a bit dry. After that things became too wonky and technical for me to follow, so I bailed.

[Steven S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a really smart way of breaking down the differences in America. It takes you to different places and explores different communities without being judgmental. And helps explain a lot of the oddities in opinion in you see on the news and read in the paper. A great read.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dante attempts to answer what makes America, America by demographic challenge. I give this book a 3.5 stars because though full of interesting information, it does not fully engage the reader. I think the most informative part of the book is the political section and the culture section especially how religion plays in their cultural milieu. Although I prefer living in a megalopolis due to the diversity that is available and the Campus&Career Centers due to the forward thinking intellectual energy of the place, I tend to identify with the Tractor Country values the most.

1) Boom Towns - were overwhelming fueled by the real estate bubble with all that it brought. They tend to be white 30ish Americans who are raising children and thus think social values and education are important. They tend to be Catholic or mainline Protestant and tend to be more educated and conservative due to the growing families. They also want to be outside city life but not leave city amenities completely. They want to recreate city lifestyle out of nothing and tend to be over-leveraged. The best example of this type of family would be Southlake and Nat and Jim.

2)Campus and Careers - Since they are in college towns, these people tend to be young and forward looking. They are activists especially in the environmental front. Environmental activism is forcing business to cater to this demographic which in turn forces local government to respond. They like change and are active participants of the New Economy; thus making them strong democrats. They tend to be adopters of technology and change. Whereas government used to be their biggest benefactors now they look to private industry to fund R&D and thus are a big economic engine for communities. I still think there is an important role the government plays in funding basic science and defense research. They are less likely to be rocked by financial catastrophes. Political debate thrives in this area.

3) Empty Nesters - They are predominantly retirees from the industrial era who do not like change, development, roads. They tend to like living in rural areas where change and development are less likely. They think Obama is a socialist because he is proposing massive curbing of the rate growth in Medicare and do not trust any sort of comprehensive reform. They distrust immigrants and think because they look different they are illegals. They belong to civic clubs. They overwhelmingly vote Republican. The only reason Obama made in roads with them in '08 was due to their shrinking investment accounts.

4) Evangelical Epicenters - The people who are attracted to this group are heavily social conservative voters who are anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage; thus they are staunchly Republicans. They dislike secular authority and doubt the validity of secularism in government in that they dislike the division between church and state. What surprises me about this group is that their anti-government sentiment extends to local government with its emphasis on anti-spending in schools and roads and any secular services. They view investments as a waste of money. Their lack of concern for education shows in that people are not going to colleges. Bottom line, they would rather give to their church rather than to government. Economically, they tend to thrive in small factories and light production. They are the home of showtune's Mega-churches with self-contained social systems that re-enforces their belief systems. They tend to be absolutist in their fervor.

5) Immigrants - Although Hispanic immigrants are naturally more socially conservative, Republican nativist tendencies are pushing them away. Business owners like the Gomez will vote Democrat just because they are afraid of being hassled by law enforcement officials even though they are citizens. Economically, they tend to work in agriculture and not manufacturing. Illegals tend to compete with unskilled high school drop outs for work. The counties tend to be evenly split as nativist want to have stricter enforcement of the "other" because they are perceived as endangering the "American way of life" though their towns have a distinct immigrant feel to them. While the "other" will vote for the party that is perceived to welcome them, Democrats. They tend to rely on the ER for care and askew health insurance altogether as unnecessary.

6) Megalopolis - They tend to be democratic bastions of the diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-cultural types. Manufacturing as a percentage of the job market is falling rapidly taken over by healthcare/education, financial/real estate. Because of the decrease in manufacturing jobs due to oversees competition, good jobs for unskilled workers are growing with an issue on racial/educational/wealth inequality rising. While a quarter of the people here pursue post-graduate training, at least a quarter are functionally illiterate. The issue here is where does one find the money to retrain unskilled workers in an economic downturn? There is twice the national average of executive/professional workers. The challenge of the cities are what challenges America will face in the 21st century.

7) Military Bastions - They tend to be based around military bases. They also tend to not like long drawn out wars because economically they suffer from the soldiers not being in town to their family being more fiscally conservative during deployment. Although the military itself is more diverse than the national average, the bases surrounding it tend to be more conservative. Also, military bases provide military contractor services and R&D. Military R&D spending can be the Republicans answer to the Democratic bastion of academia.

8) Minority Central - Mostly found in the deep south with a high of 40% blacks in the population. Whites and Blacks live in separate but parallel universe. Because they are so divided in their interaction, they are divided in their politics too. They are the poorest in the nation with a perpetual degree of unemployment and lower than average enrollment in college; they rely on a rapidly diminishing manufacturing sector for employment. Race politics plays into every sort of politics here from education to wage differentiation. The issue here is that both races are consigned to this separation and the lack of opportunities for black people. Both races here do not want to interact with the other. White flight into private schools make taxing for better public schools for blacks not popular. But, how else are you going to raise the standard for the Black race?

9) Monied Burbs - When people think of the American dream as a land of plenty, they think of the monied burbs. This is the place where the vast majority of middle class live and is highly demographically represented of America as a whole. What is telling is that these regions have one of the highest educational and thus financial achievements of all of America. There is an even split between religious people and non-religious people here with people who are religious evenly split between all major Christian denomination. They are also the proverbial SWING VOTE with a reported 39% of the voters saying that they are independent. They only care about the economy in their voting politics and especially as it effects the stock market. This is where the spirit of entrepreneurship reign and thought-leaders live.

10) Mormon outpost - LDS are the most reliable Republicans out there with the way they value traditionalism and askew anything perceived as the "other". They value individual responsibility and law&order. Economically, they seem to be average for the country. They are super white in make up and agriculture tend to make up a bigger percentage of their economy. Despite the increasing influx of Hispanics due to agriculture, they have a tradition of welcoming them because of their deliberate isolationist policies this is not a surprise. The real test is when Hispanics begin to outnumber white mormons; at that point will they still be welcoming. But as of now, Mormons tend to value a harmonious, ordered union with intelligent cooperation.

11) Service Centers - These are tourist places that are wedded directly to the economic forecasting. They are the first to feel the pinch when a recession is brewing. They economically driven by small-scale economic trade that is trading with once neighbors. The three main employers for this region are service a la tourism and neighborly trade, education, and light manufacturing. They are losing a lot of young people due to the lack of long term work and since these are tourist towns they are more likely to be wage-earners not salaried. Though Republican-leaning, they do not vote along ideological lines usually but rather by economic outlook.

12) Tractor County - This is what one imagines when people speak of small-town America. They are largely old white Republican that seem to concentrated in the Midwest. People who live here cherish the small town feel and the fact that you can always count on your neighbors for a helping hand. For example, regional banks will loan people money based on their relationships not based on a credit score; thus they were not as effected by the financial meltdown and cannot fathom why the federal government would risk going into debt to fund the mistakes of others who choose to be overleverage People here where frugality as a badge of honor and look at federal debt with dismay. Despite there distrust of federal spending, they do not look at government as the enemy like evangelical centers do but prefer local government who only spend what is needed to make society work. The people here are heavily into agricultural as the main industry. Even though they will vote for social conservative positions, they are not activists about it like the Mormons or Evangelicals because they dislike talking about controversial issues that will cause discord.


Patchwork Nation: economics -

Here is a shocking statistic: Since 1972 American productivity has risen 90% but his real wage has decreased by 11%. No doubt a lot of it is due to technology that has allowed productivity to increase globally and thus has allowed the same amount of work to be done at a faster time and since the markets are now global has depressed real wages in the US. But the question now becomes, is there a way for real wages to increase or will continue to remain forever flat?

The Great Recession hits different areas differently for example
1) Unemployment hit the places where education is the worst such as megalopolis where there is a stark inequality in educational achievement as well as minority central, or service worker central. Add to the fact that both minority central and service worker central are in the middle of nowhere that provides a disincentive for companies to move to these places.

2) Foreclosures and down housing market are hitting Boom Towns the hardest along with Mormon Outpost and Immigration nation

3) Stock Market shakiness hurts the monied burbs and empty nesters the most. The best people to position themselves against long term effects of the recession are monied burbs due to higher incomes and education

From all of the patchwork nation, the best to come out unscathed from the Great Recession is tractor country because of their aversion to debt and their economies rely on agriculture not on manufacturing.


Patchwork nation: Politics

Obama's election was historical change but not a political realignment that so many thought it would be. The only time there is such a clamor for political realignment was during the Great Depression.

Turning out the base:

Megalopolis tend to vote heavily democrat because demographically they have high minority population, urban poor, and wealth liberals. They also see the real effects of federal government in their lives from transportation to poverty programs.

Tractor Country - tend to be socially and fiscally conservative. They prefer local government to solve their problems and see federal government as too intrusive.

Mormon Outpost - with their call for individual liberty and social conservatism also tend to be reliably republican though the influx of people who do not subscribe to those values can certainly change the demographics

Evangelical Centers - primarily vote on social conservative issues not economic ones. They feel it is their duty to evangelize the rest of the nation to be a Christian Nation. They voted for John McCain because of Sarah Palin.


Hard Sell:

Military Bastions - Although they tend to be Republicans due to the heavy emphasis of patriotism, there vote is primarily influenced by military pork spending and stopping long-drawn out wars

Empty Nesters - they are socially and fiscally conservatives and dislike any change but they respond the most to status quo on the entitlement programs of social security and medicare as well as fluctuations in the stock market

Campus&Careers - they are more attuned to democratically social policies for change such as environmental protection. Although staunchly Democrat, inroads can be made by the libertarian wing of the Republican party.


Republican-leaning window shoppers:

Boom town tend to be more conservative due to their relative wealth compared to the general population and the fact they wanted to escape the liberal reach of urban and suburban areas in favor of area with a small town feel. Although they leaned less Republican due to the high foreclosure rates, this area has also given rise to the Tea Party movement due to government largesse seen as helping the big banks not them

Service Worker Center - Although they resemble the Tractor Country in their desire to preserve the small town feel, the economy based on tourism is hit the hardest and thus their population might feel that they need federal government assistance the most and maybe enough to switch small town Republicans to Democrats


Free Agents:

Monied Burbs - are not politically ideological but rather driven by the economic weather and specifically their stock portfolio. They vote based on the party the gives them most economic advantage

Immigration Nation - Although immigrants are traditionally social conservatives (W won them), the current GOP anti-immigrant stance has pushed immigrants toward the Democrats for the foreseeable future. For people in immigration nation, it will be nativist who are threatened by immigrants vs citizen immigrants who are tired looking over their shoulders and the businesses who higher illegals to decrease their fixed costs.

Minority Central - will continue to vote based on their race but seeing the vast majority of them will be in Republican states their votes will continue to be disenfranchised

Populist movements of today distrust both the government and big business elites as well as immigrants who they perceive as taking jobs away from them.

Patchwork Nation: Cultural

Today's cultural influences both represents and reinforces that particular environment where they live. Marketers really did their homework in bringing content where it is wanted such as Organic supermarkets which are predominantly located in upper income places such as the monied burbs, boom towns, megalopolis, and campus&careers.

Radio talk shows are divided by NPR with its emphasis on global facts and conservative partisan radio shows that reinforces preconceived notions.

It is interesting to read about Faith and its cultural impacts on politics

1) Evangelicals tend to center on faith&salvation with highly personal experience which pushes them to favor politics that emphasize individual liberty and focus on their congregation at the exclusion of government intervention of any kind. But interestingly enough, they think that faith should be the defining factor in public service.

2) Service Worker Centers even though they are small towns are surprisingly un-religious which explains why Maine votes independently of party

3) Tractor Country tends to be populated with mainline Protestants and Catholics who have an ecumenical view to solving local problems. They also tend to have a top-down hierarchy to doing common things for the community predominates

4)Empty Nesters tend to go to church only out of habit and tend to vote based on who can help elderly concerns the most

5) Mormon Outpost- although they are most threatened by Hollywood and liberal media, they are the ones who cherish the separation of church and state due to being prosectued by the state in its earlier age

Conclusion:

Chinni states that Patchwork Nation proves there is no such thing as 1 single American identity but he states that the American outlook strikingly one of optimism. Americans as a people thing that they have control over their destiny. It seems the more downtrodden a group is the more optimistic their outlook is as can be seen from Minority Central to Immigration Nation. Unlike other countries, we except the validity of the political process and disdain the use of violence as an act of intolerance.

[Andrew Figueiredo · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Our Patchwork Nation” is an interesting look at America that usefully goes beyond ‘red and blue’. Following books like “The Clustering of America” (which I also own and peruse without reading cover to cover) and marketing segmentation like Claritas PRIZM, its authors break down counties into 12 different archetypes. Combining factor analysis as well as more subjective approaches, Chini and Gimpel first describe their types and then explore the ways they differ and converge on economic, political, and cultural issues. Each of the typological descriptions relies on data as well as interviews with residents of an exemplar county for that type. For example, ‘Emptying Nests’ discusses a retiree-heavy central Florida city and ‘Monied Burbs’ Los Alamos, New Mexico. This blend of anecdote and data made the book entertaining to read and added a human touch to what otherwise might seem too removed from ground-level context.

While most of the classifications make sense, there are a few counties that leave me scratching my head. How does Geary County, KS with all its Fort Riley staff not make ‘Military Bastions’? Yet Riley County does, while it’s definitely more of a college town area that should be ‘Campus and Careers’. Or take ‘Minority Central’ which somehow takes in parts of Appalachian Kentucky with pretty small minority populations. Of course, I didn’t expect the authors to come up with an unassailable classification, but there are some questionable choices. Moreover, although it might have taken more data inputs, they should have considered more than 12 county types. The explanation of ‘Service Worker Centers’ fixates on touristy areas, somehow lumped in with post-industrial small towns. These things just aren’t that alike. Maybe the problem was choosing an anecdotal example of a tourist town, but my hunch is that a 13th classification specifically for touristy areas would be more valuable.

The second portion, discussing various differences and trends, was surprisingly good considering this book is 12 years old. Some other reviewers claim its predictions were off, but 2016 and 2020 really vindicated the authors’ guess that an anti-illegal-immigration right-wing populism could arise from discontent in working class regions. Over half a decade before Trump ran for President, these two authors saw it coming.

Moreover, I enjoyed the discussion about how each community type was differently impacted by the recession. Similarly, the section about culture amply demonstrated how different our bubbles are. The authors noted and explained some thought-provoking patterns AND acknowledged where the results surprised them. The book is more descriptive than prescriptive, although the authors hail federalism and tailoring programs to local realities. These are useful ideas developed in many other sources.

While it’s difficult to turn American counties (with their internal diversity) into 12 types, these two authors came up with a handy framework that reveals America’s complexity. Simply talking partisanship is too simple. Yet while marketing segments are very detailed, they can also get excessively complex. Instead, this entertaining and easy to read book strikes an imperfect but happy medium.

[Nathaniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good theory, bad statistical presentation.

I've lived in seven states in all four continental US time zones, and understanding regional behavior in this country is a personal interest of mine. I also have graduate-level research methods training, making me the perfect person to critique this book. And I really wanted to like it. Unfortunately, it just doesn't pass the smell test once the methodology is poked at even a little.

The basic premise of this book is to counteract the sweeping and inaccurate trend of the news media and those who follow it to paint a state's entire population based entirely on state-level "red" and "blue" behavior. To this end, the authors have attempted to divide the nation into demographic groups based on primary traits, such as "Immigration Nation" (Latino-dominated counties), "Monied Burbs", etc. These "types" are then profiled using one county as an example, which is supposed to be representative of all counties in this category. (There's also an analysis of economic, cultural, and political factors in the back, but I mostly skipped over this for being way too general).

There are two problems with the authors' approach, a big problem and a little problem. The little problem is that profiling one county is assumed to represent all counties in this category when, in some cases, counties in the same category may be broadly similar, but widely different in specific variables. This is not adequately captured in the infographics for each county type, which misleadingly just give the demographic grouping instead of accurately stating that these are statistics just for the "representative" county. It would be accurate, for example, to say that Philadelphia is an "industrial metropolis" that is 70% Democratic, and has certain age distribution, income distribution, and immigration variables. It is not accurate to say that "all industrial metropolises are 70% Democratic and have the same other variables as Philadelphia", which is what the heading implies; for example, Indianapolis, while definitely an "industrial metropolis" as defined in the description of that county type and identified as such, is much less Democratic and has different other variables, and most other "industrial metropolises" are somewhere between Indianapolis and Philadelphia in Democratic affiliation, and have variables of their own in the other categories. This would seem to just be a problem with a lazy editor putting the wrong heading on these charts, but it seriously distorts the analysis by implying that data for one county is an average when those tables should be presenting an actual average of all of the counties in that sample, not just a mislabeled demographic profile of one arbitrary-picked "representative" county.

Now for the big problem, which is that the assignation of category only makes sense about half of the time, and usually only in cases where it makes sense to anyone with a very basic understanding of US geography and urban growth patterns, e.g. counties that are very conspicuously suburban and anchoring major cities are always "monied burbs" (except for Washington County, Oregon, where all of the richest people in Portland live, which is inexplicably a "boom town".)

Using the list found in the appendix, I checked Chinni's primary and secondary categorization of every county I've ever lived in (a geographically balanced "convenience sample"), as well as several other counties that were experiencing demographic growth, such as Multnomah County, Oregon and Harris County, Texas. I then compared Chinni's results to how I would classify these counties as a demographer, and in most cases as an actual onetime resident. The results were night and day. As with the Oregon example above, about half of Chinni's primary, secondary, or both categorizations make absolutely no sense whatsoever to someone actually familiar with that county, with the results being particularly bad in developed areas surrounded by rural ones. For example, Chittenden County, Vermont (Burlington), the largest county in an educated state and home to the University of Vermont and about 6 other colleges, is inexplicably described as a "boom town" instead of "campus and careers" despite not having had a significant population explosion in about 35 years and meeting the "campus and careers" description to a T. Missoula County, Montana, another college town located at 3,200 feet in the middle of the Rockies, is bizarrely given "Tractor Country" as a secondary category. Major cities aren't exempt from this process, either - who'd have known that Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon, had the secondary category of "industrial metropolis" along the lines of Pittsburgh and Cleveland because they had a little bit of industry 60 years ago, despite having basically none of the same racial or economic demographics today? Worst of all are cases where the map in the book doesn't match the appendix. Burleigh County, North Dakota (Bismarck), is identified as "tractor country" on the "tractor country" map, which is accurate, but is inexplicably listed as a "monied burb" in the appendix, despite having an average per capita income of $28,350 and encompassing a small city with no suburbs surrounded for hundreds of miles by farmland.

The categories are also inconsistently defined. For example, "campus and careers" as a secondary category seems to be used to denote any location, regardless of actual college presence, that has an educated population, except, oddly, for certain actual college towns such as Burlington. The "military bastions" category manages to miss Martin County, Indiana, home of the third-largest naval installation in the country (which covers 33% of the county's land area); Martin County is instead an "emptying nest" and an "evangelical epicenter", both accurate categories, but not the *most* accurate. And the "boom town" category seems to be completely random, encompassing a group of towns that have very little in common except for an arbitrarily-defined economic upswing at the time of the analysis. This is especially interesting because nowhere in eastern Montana or western North Dakota falls into this category by Chinni's analysis, despite the Bakken shale oil boom really making this region the *only* group that falls into this category in actuality. Admittedly, other groupings, such as "Immigration nation" (plurality-Latino counties, mostly) and "evangelical epicenters" are pretty accurate, but these are the ones that are most obvious because they focus on one inelastic statistical measure (e.g. ethnicity or religious affiliation) rather than several, and do not really change from region to region.

In short, this book's profiles of the different regions are useful, and the effort to go beyond black and white (or in this case red and blue) is commendable, but Chinni's methodology really leaves something to be desired. He has really only replaced the sweeping and willful inaccuracy of Election 2000's black and white stereotyping with a different, more nuanced kind of inaccuracy borne of not putting enough effort into categorization before this was published. This is an emerging field of knowledge that still has a long way to go, and while this book has made a noteworthy contribution, we're still not even halfway there yet.

[Chuck Kollars · Rating 2 out of 5]

Truth in advertising: After reading the introduction and appendix, I realized I had major issues with this book, so I just quickly scanned the four chapters of general results, and mostly didn't even look at the twelve chapters of specific results.

This book's major impetus is that the RedState/BlueState framework wasn't actually very helpful, and a more nuanced and meaningful approach was needed. Duh. It's hard to remember now that not that long ago analysts actually used the RedState/BlueState divide seriously; I've not seen anybody take such a coarse and uninformative approach recently. The research seems to have worked backward from its expected conclusions: that different parts of the U.S. aren't really so different after all, and that simple socioeconomics largely explains perceived differences in communities.

For me the real takeaways were not at all the intended ones: that politics and news are increasingly using the same sorts of demographic analysis that marketing is already using, and that the rural/agricultural area in the middle of our country is very different from the rest and is increasingly being ignored by national politics.

The main problem I have with this book is the methodology - both that it foreordained the results, and that it doesn't address what I consider the interesting questions. The authors chose to work at the county level: much finer than the state level, yet with readily available statistics. Each county was described by the sorts of mainly demographic information found in the U.S. decennial census, describing the socioeconomics of each place in some detail. Then an attempt was made to provide cultural information too, but the only data readily available for the whole country was about church affiliation. With all this data, a sort of "factor analysis" was run, and a set of twelve different types of places were identified.

My chief issue: When the inputs are largely the socioeconomic viewpoint, it's no surprise that the outputs are socioeconomic too. Where is the cultural viewpoint? And does it matter? This book at first appears to be similar to Joel Garreau's "The Nine Nations of North America" or Colin Woodard's "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America", but is in fact completely different, taking the socioeconomic view while those previous books take a cultural (and historical) view.

A few of my questions were not presented plainly (or just plain omitted) : what was the relative importance of each factor? and how much did each bit of demographic data contribute to each factor (for example: is age or income more important, etc.)? But most of my questions were simply impossible for the methodology to answer: what are the relative weights of the socioeconomic characterization of a community and the cultural characterization of that community in determining voting patterns? how do community characterizations change over time? are the types of community found in the U.S. similar to the types of community found in similar countries? does the U.S. break down into "regions" that add to the socioeconomic explanation of voting patterns?

The state of Massachusetts tried something similar to classify all its towns a few decades ago. Based on the statistics the state had, it grouped its towns into a "Kind of Community" scheme (one of the Kinds of Community was in fact a not-very-well disguised "miscellaneous"). Unfortunately when the analysis was run again with newer statistics a few years later, quite a few towns moved from one Kind of Community to another. The same thing happened a second time after a few more years. So Massachusetts gave up on the whole approach, probably for a combination of several different reasons which probably included both the obvious instability and the high maintenance effort.

The Massachusetts methodology assigned each town to only one kind of community, but then had to deal with towns moving from one kind of community to another frequently. By contrast this book's methodology describes each county as a combination of types (for example something along the lines of: 40% Boom Town, 35% Campus & Career, 15% Immigration Nation, and 10% Monied Burbs). While more accurate and more stable, this multiple characterization makes the results harder to understand and to use.

Lest you think I'm just dumping on this book - it's by far the best implementation of this approach I've ever seen. My issue is not at all with the implementation; rather it's the approach itself that I think is wrong-headed.

Despite my issues with the overall theme of the book, I did find some useful nuggets:

First is that many community types have a very strong geographic base. Empty Nests is largely in the upper midwest. While there are Evangelical Epicenters all over the country, by far their densest clustering is in the South. Immigration Nation is largely along the Mexican border (and Florida). Minority Central is largely confined to a swath along the coast (except excluding Florida) from Missisippi east, then north to Delaware. Monied Burbs are everywhere _except a swath right down the center of the country. Mormon Outposts center rather strongly on Utah. Service Worker Centers are everywhere, _especially along the Mexican border. And Tractor Country is largely the Great Plains. (The area of _no Monied Burbs and the area of Tractor Country are similar but not identical, with Tractor Country being a little further east.)

Second is that by all appearances the church affiliation data explain virtually nothing, not providing proxies for any additional cultural factors that help explain voting patterns, and not providing any socioeconomic factor not already captured by the more direct census information.

And third is that the authors were very observant and accurate and provide a whole lot of insight into a whole lot of different things. Unfortunately these almost anecdotal observations are scattered all through the book, are not connected by any organizational scheme, and do not contribute to the book's themes (in fact if anything they contradict the themes).

The book ends with the authors expressing mild astonishment that places so different have hung together in one country.

[EDIT later addition: I ran across a single chart showing the type of every county. It would have significantly diminished (but by no means eliminated:-) my issues with this book. Unfortunately, it is NOT IN THE BOOK. (True, there is a similar graphic _on _the _cover of my paperback edition, but there it has no key and no explanation and no caption telling what it is.) Too bad that one chart was omitted from the book. One possible reason I can think of is that it uses colors heavily as the data is rather complex, but the book printing is restricted to black and white and the chart would look like gobbledygook if printed in B&W. I hope my guess isn't true. If it is, a decision to save a few dollars by not inserting some "plates" in the book caused the results of multiple man-years of effort to not be communicated but rather to be in essence flushed down the toilet.]

[Elena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chinni and Gimpel try to create a new way to look at the US, not just the red/blue divide but also categorizing the country into different communities that are connected in their way of living but not necessarily aware of others. I like the approach and as a Data nerd I think they could have dug deeper. It all felt very shallow.

Favorite quotes
Although some might like to take comfort in the idea that we're all in the same boat, we aren't really.

It's easy to mistake the problems you see where you live for problems that exist everywhere - to practice what psychologists call "projection". But the struggles of people in other places, although different, are no less real than yours.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was published in October 2011 but holds up well in 2019. One noticeable forecasting error, we, the country, stopped getting along with each other. The possible realignment of the suburbs has happened. The commentary on racism in America has aged to perfection.

A nice historical picture of the way the nation was in 2009, still pertinent

[Kalli · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look behind the misleading political bifurcation of America and exploration of 12 proposed county-level identities that drive electoral choices instead. The book is a bit dated however in that it was written before President Trump’s election and therefore doesn’t address the causes or repercussions of that event.

[Amy K · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly dense book containing a lot of data. Not a page turner, but interesting.

[Xin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice book. Still reads more like non-fiction than a scientific dissertation.

[Angela G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking and fascinating information. Would love to read a sequel.

[Kent Winward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dated material that doesn't quite explain 2016 and 2024 . . .

[Harris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Published back in 2010, as others have pointed out, this title has really not aged well since, but then, I am not sure if I would have really been convinced by the authors’ arguments even five years ago. Most obviously, the authors could not take into account the 2012 Election and the insights that might have affected their takes on these various demographics discussed here. The lack of this really made much of the book seem sadly incomplete, though the author’s website does updates, and in fact, contains much of the same information to be found in the book itself.

I enjoy learning about how regional demographics affect the politics and culture of the nation, and particularly after reading Colin Woodward’s American Nations, I was intrigued by this different take on the premise. Using a variety of surveys, statistics, and trends the authors identify a variety of demographic “community types" that comprise the various populations of the US. Choosing to break up these various community styles on the county level into twelve distinct types, the authors illustrate a “patchwork” nation comprised of these various competing, mutually alien attitudes. There is some interesting information shared that helps to make some sense of trends in 2010s America, but also, more questions are raised than are really answered.

If the authors were trying to escape the “artificiality” of arbitrary state boundaries to explore the various disunited cultural groups of the United States, choosing counties seems equally arbitrary. The counties I’ve lived in, Hennepin and Blue Earth County, Minnesota (“Moneyed Burbs” and “Boom Town,” respectively) don’t seem particularly well suited to the descriptions of either of these two types as provided. Hennepin County, for instance, while certainly including some “moneyed burbs,” also encompasses some of the state’s most diverse urban areas as well, awkwardly termed in the book “Minority Central,” while Blue Earth County seems to fit the “Campus and Careers” or even "Farm Country" better than “Boom Town,” even if the city of Mankato is a growing town. It all seems just a bit too arbitrary to be really compelling.

A lot of the demographic information drawn upon the authors is, by itself, fascinating, and can occasionally make good points about the societal changes, I am also not sure what Hennepin County really has in common with the featured community, Santa Fe, New Mexico, except the superficial. They are entirely divorced from geographic, ethnic, or cultural differences between places. Boom Towns, in particular, seem to be the catch-all term for counties that don’t fit completely in any other camp. Interesting, but repetitive, much of the material here has been rendered out of date over the last few years.

[Follin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Being a nerd for books like this--mix of political science, geography, demography, cultural differences in US--I was excited to read this book, which purports to go beyond the simplistic red-blue divide to a finer-grained analysis of 12 different types of communities. The methodology seemed sound, the arguments compelling. But the first sign of trouble was the names of the 12 types, which authors admitted were not descriptive of many communities included therein--e.g., Tractor Country included lots of desert counties; Moneyed Burbs weren't necessarily suburbs. But I told myself not to be picky, so I kept reading.

Imagine my surprise, when I found that my hometown (Forsyth county, NC) was categorized EXACTLY the same way as my current home (San Francisco). Both were rated primarily Moneyed Burbs and secondarily Industrial Metropolis. This does not pass the sniff test; I was just in NC, where people were griping about the risk of losing their "Obama guns" in the wake of the CT school shooting, where they laud tradition and the customary way of doing things. I know it's only one example, but it is a stark one. A system that can't distinguish out two such widely varying counties doesn't hold promise, in my opinion.

A better, albeit dated, book is Nine Nations of North America by Joel Garreau. I see other newer titles out there and will be exploring them. Granted, red and blue monikers are overly simplistic. But his book removes geography and thus history (hello, differences from being the only region of our country to be defeated in war, versus being part of the pioneer tradition, versus having deep roots from Spanish America but only recent settlement by Anglos, etc) Again, doesn't pass the common sense test.

[Beran Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book should have been subtitled “How the 12 community types that make up our nation fared during the Great Recession and felt about Bush and Obama.”

It was an okay book. It certainly had some interesting information and commentary about how different community types view America and their place in it. I was raised in what the book dubs “Tractor Country” and the authors definitely were able to make sense of why I felt that I experienced America so differently growing up than what many others seem to.

But it was so limited in scope. I understand that in a way, a book like this is written at a certain time and is thus a commentary on how America was at that time. But as it alluded to in the conclusion, the patchwork-ness of America is a common thread throughout its whole history, and so I think that they could have put a bit more effort in to make the book a little bit more timeless so that the principle could be applied easily to any time in the future. As it is, most of the synthesis and commentary is just a snapshot of American culture in 2010.

All that said, I would say it’s a good introductory book for anyone who’s stuck in the red-blue binary view of the U.S. This country is a whole lot more complex than who votes Democrat or Republican, and this book demonstrates that well.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish this book were more popular. It's just as well-written and interesting as any of a number of popular social science books (think Jared Diamond or Malcolm Gladwell).

The premise is the authors' search to find an alternative to the "red state/blue state" language to describe different sections of the U.S. They opted to create ten to fifteen sections, based on a huge variety of county-level data. Based on the data, they decided on twelve. Each county is statistically assigned into one of the twelve communities: boom towns, campus and careers, emptying nests, evangelical epicenters, immigration nation, industrial metropolis, military bastions, minority central, monied burbs, Mormon outposts, service worker centers, and tractor country. Each of these types is described with a combination of quantitative and qualitative data: detailed maps, graphs, and interview quotes and analysis from one representative town from each type. Following those twelve chapters are overviews of the economy, politics, and culture, looking at the similarities and differences of each community with regard to these topics.

It's impressive as an analysis, but also an impressive read.

[Daniel Stefanski · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like reading about pop-sociology, demographics, and culture, than this book is for you. The book is satisfying especially if you enjoyed "The 11 Nations of North America". If anything, that book should be required reading before delving into this one. Together, they paint a realistic portrait of the U.S. The authors propose that there are 11 different types of American communities, "industrial megalopolis'", "evangelical outposts", "tractor country", etc. Having lived in a few different areas in my life, the authors descriptions of the aforementioned communities rang true. I did wish that the authors acknowledged that many communities overlap. This is only indirectly hinted at in the data set stored away at the end of the book. For example, where I lived in SC was classified as a "boomtown". Realistically, while that made some sense, "military outpost", "evangelical epicenter", and "minority central" also applied. Lastly, the book is a bit outdated, as it was written in the wake of the Great Recession. Of course, Trump's election has all but extinguished some sociological analysis from the last few decades.

[Ally Brunette · Rating 4 out of 5]

In keeping with my theme of finishing books ‘too quickly’, I borrowed this book from my mom to read on the plane as I kept completing all of my travel reading ahead of schedule. Such an Ally problem to have, honestly. This book is one my mom has been suggesting I read for years and while the political context was sorely outdated (we truly live in a different world a decade later), she was right – I loved the methodology behind it. The authors attempt to subdivide the United States into non-contiguous “nations” by identifying common traits such as education levels, religion, employment types and diversity. The result are twelve nations and the authors break down at the County level nationally where these nations exist within the boundaries of our actual nation. The book itself, written just as President Obama was first elected, is drastically different than the world we live in now. However, the data on the Patchwork Nation website is up to date and you can learn about the twelve nations and identify which nation your County is a part of. If you’re a mega sociology and politics geek, consider reading the book.

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dante Chinni and Jame Gimpel's "Our Patchwork Nation" is a statistical analysis of the United States. "Our Patchwork Nation" attempts to assign every county of the 2008 United States into one of 11 different political viewpoints based upon a large number of data points.

I found the book is well written. And found that within the goals of the book, it was transparent in terms of methodology and data used.

I found the book's analysis far more nuanced than the standard "Red State- Blue State" narrative. Which I appreciated.

I expect that folks and organizations interested in politics have a far more detailed understanding. I also expect that the statistical analysis and use of "Big Data" have improved since the book was written.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in a more detailed examination of the political and often worldview of various sectors of the United States population.

I also expect that it some point it will become out-dated. Either in terms of shifting politics, or in terms of updated statistical analysis.