Hoo2LA writes: Charlottesville is certainly a town of conflicted identity – rural backwater, bustling university town, the usual middle-class place, home of the idle rich. To help marketers sort through the mess, claritas.com has given us exact breakdowns of who lives where and what sorts of people they are. Do you think they’ve got us nailed?
For example, here is what pops up for 22901:
Charlottesville 22901’s most common PRIZM Clusters are:
The Boomtown Singles like to paint, draw, sculpt and watch the X-Files. They have school loans and make about $35 grand.
So, which one are you? Keep reading to see claritas.com’s data on Our Fair City.
Wow, thats right on!
Don’t you hate it when people reduce your entire existance to 2 words?
Nope, not in there. But I already knew that.
That doesn’t describe me or most people I know. In some places you can generalize like that, but Charlottesville has so many unique people. I noticed none of their categories, at least that I saw, included people with families. Odd.
I believe that the Second City Elite, Country Squires and Smalltown Downtown are all family sorts.
Not that I necessarily agree with this roster, but they are at least aware some of the kids in this town aren’t enrolled at the university.
There was an article in reason online a while ago that suggested that these sort of social categories really determine a lot about who we are (in addition to being massive tools used by marketers). We aspire not to wealth or possession, but categories. It may seem a rather banal conclusion to many of us, but it sure is interesting to see what others think of where we are (and what we may be aiming towards).
The main problem I saw with these categories was that they were too specific. Although there are certainly plenty of people who fit each of the lifestyle/income type descriptions, when it went into what these people read and watch, it describes less people. In groups of people like this, everyone’s interests are vastly different
Charlottesville has so many normal people who think they’re unique…
I’ve never encountered a place so bent on wishing it was different.
I didn’t see anything that said "can’t drive worth crap" – so I think this is way off.