Uncovering the connected states of America
The Connected States of America is the newest project to come out of the SENSEable City Lab at MIT. With PopTech 2010 presenter Carlo Ratti leading the charge, this initiative takes a look at how communities are redefining themselves within the United States, tracking social interactions by studying anonymous, aggregated mobile phone data.
As Ratti explained in the New York Times this past weekend:
There are sister states like Georgia and Alabama, and Mississippi and Louisiana. New Jersey and California, on the other hand, split in half because of the influences of large cities. Chattanooga, Tenn., communicates more with the Georgia-Alabama community than with the rest of Tennessee, and Pittsburgh splits from Pennsylvania to align with West Virginia. Texas remains whole, because the communication among Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin is strong enough to hold it together.
Visualizations of the findings provide evidence that communities are determined by far more than physical proximity or geographic location.
Image: Connected States of America
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