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Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Hip ZIPs and other adventures in moving.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An actual line in an e-mail I wrote on March 2, during my three-day whirlwind apartment hunt in Atlanta: I was driving around Virginia-Highland looking at all the crowds of happy young people and wanted to scream, “WHERE ARE YOU COMING FROM? HOW DO YOU AFFORD TO LIVE HERE?!”
Armed with a limited in-town map, a pile of ads from craigslist, Creative Loafing and AJC.com, a few recommendations and memories from the Atlanta of five years ago, I needed to find a home. My goal was a reasonably priced, generally comfortable place as close as possible to work, available mid-March and preferably without the freshly white-washed scent of new condo paint.
You know what tool I used to find those available places, and to find my way around? ZIP codes. I eventually stumbled into a place that worked out just about perfectly, but those first few days were kind of demoralizing. ZIP codes were string of numbers that mostly helped me to get lost. Driving around neighborhoods was more helpful, if not good for answering questions. My notes from the trip say things like “V-H: feels like college,” and “Inman Park: why do I keep getting lost on the same street?” and “Old Fourth Ward: I guess the condos are new?”
I’m finally getting a sense of these places, plus so many of the other neighborhoods I would’ve liked to have seen if, you know, I hadn’t been lost in Inman Park and Buckhead the whole time. Every place here seems to be rich with it’s own ever-changing personality, some of which agree with me more than others. One street to another is different, and rarely what I expect.
So…why was the ZIP code, a much larger area with so much variety, the main tool for finding the place you fit in?
On the suggestion of my very smart editor, we put together this story about what ZIP codes really mean and how they’re used for more than just delivering mail. The research introduced me to sites like market researcher Claritas’ ZIP code database, which is happy to categorize based on their ZIP code and the information we’ve provide as consumers.
So tell me this: do you fit into your ZIP code? Do you feel at-home in your neighborhood? How do they compare, for you, and to each other?
And how do all those happy young people afford to live in Virginia-Highland?
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