Broadband Availability By County Type

Patchwork Nation, an effort at characterizing the diversity of American communities by creating a general typology of counties, has turned its lens toward broadband availability, in collaboration with Connected Nation,: Leaving close scrutiny of the typology itself for another day (and the characterization of counties as "Minority Central," "Immigration Nation," and "Evangelical Epicenters"), the map provides a good first cut at assessing socio-demogaphic correlates of broadband availability. As Patchwork Nation's Dante Chinni describes:

So if you were to sit down with a mathematician and try to figure out a formula for connectivity - admittedly a very difficult challenge - it might look something like population density, plus education, plus income, plus civic engagement equals better access to broadband.

Well, having sat down with broadband data at many levels, yup, that predictive model is just about spot on. That said, as presented, I'm not quite sure what to make of the "community engagement" part of the equation. Since that is at the heart of my own work, I have some ideas of what might be meant by it, though.