Ghost of Midnight

Sorting into tribes vs. connecting with a variety of neighbors

From Lisa Prevost’s recent article in the New York Times about using data and web services to find the “perfect” suburb…

… the Spektors were overwhelmed by the prospect of trying to distinguish among the hundreds of commuter towns surrounding New York. So they turned to Suburban Jungle Realty Group, a personal relocation firm that works one-on-one with city dwellers looking to move to the “right” suburb…

Though novel in its business model, Suburban Jungle is part of a controversial industry trend that caters to home buyers who have both the desire and the ability to cherry-pick their surroundings. Other real estate websites are supplying home buyers with loads of hyper-specific community data, including racial makeup, percent of married households and education level…

Want to find a “family-friendly” community within 20 miles of Boston with a high Asian population, a low poverty rate and a median home value of $400,000? On NeighborhoodScout.com, you can plug in these preferences (and many more) on the subscription-only “Advanced Search” page and get a ranked list of options…

This trend raises some thorny questions. The growing accessibility of highly detailed demographic data plays into the natural tendency of home buyers to look for “people like us,” which is as old as the subdivided hills…

Bill Bishop, a Texas journalist and the author of “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart“ (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), argues that this tribalism is a major driver of the country’s deepening political polarization. Over the last 30 years, he says, greater mobility, laws enforcing racial equity and prosperity have given Americans even more choice about where to live. Will Internet-enhanced abilities to scout out communities intensify that sorting effect?

Front Porch Forum works in a different direction.  People use FPF to connect with their existing neighbors, despite their differences.  A 2013 survey found that 60% of recent FPF posters had met multiple neighbors due to their local Front Porch Forum.  This isn’t an accident.  We created FPF to counter the problems outlined in “The Big Sort” and Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone.”  More from the Times article…

… the growing accessibility of so much demographic data has the potential to fuel the segregation that is already increasing along a number of lines economically, racially, ideologically. Mr. Bishop, the author of “The Big Sort,” argues that as other forms of community have gone away or weakened, Americans are increasingly reordering themselves around shared values and areas of interest. “Given a choice,” he said, “people choose to segregate themselves into these places where they can surround themselves with people like themselves.”

This self-segregating boosts people’s sense of well-being by satisfying the need to belong, says Mr. Motyl, who studies ideological migration. But the resulting decrease in contact with anyone who thinks differently serves to heighten partisanship. “It allows us to become more extreme in our own ideas,” Mr. Motyl said, “and is one explanation for why our system has become so gridlocked.”