Geodemographic Classification

Geodemographic classification is the process of grouping small geographic areas into a set of distinctive neighbourhood types according to the demographic, socioeconomic, and housing characteristics of the people who live there. It rests on the principle that 'birds of a feather flock together' — that residents of a neighbourhood tend to resemble one another and differ from those elsewhere — and turns dozens of census variables into a single, interpretable label for every area. Commercial systems such as Mosaic and ACORN and open classifications such as the UK Output Area Classification are all built this way, and the approach was consolidated as a discipline by Harris, Sleight and Webber in 2005.