I'd like to live near you, but first, I have some questions...

Really provocative Economist piece on the self-segregation of American communities. Includes all sorts of juicy implications in politics, economics, etc. Here's a loaded excerpt:

A good way to measure this is to look at the country's changing electoral geography. In 1976 Jimmy Carter won the presidency with 50.1% of the popular vote. Though the race was close, some 26.8% of Americans were in “landslide counties” that year, where Mr Carter either won or lost by 20 percentage points or more.

The proportion of Americans who live in such landslide counties has nearly doubled since then. In the dead-heat election of 2000, it was 45.3%. When George Bush narrowly won re-election in 2004, it was a whopping 48.3%. As the playwright Arthur Miller put it that year: “How can the polls be neck and neck when I don't know one Bush supporter?” Clustering is how.

**Credit goes to Andrea Cross for forwarding this, thanks!