IJMR Lecture: The Predictive Postcode

Richard Webber’s book The Predictive Postcode breaks new ground by using the practice of geodemographic classification to call into doubt a number of methodological and taxonomic assumptions, which continue to underlie research – such as the over-arching role of class and other person-level demographics in “explaining” behaviour, the belief in ordinal ranking as opposed to qualitative categories based on cluster analysis and the importance of numerical rather than visual clues in the characterisation of neighbourhoods.

In this lecture Richard tests the relevance of geodemographic categories to the understanding of issues of current social and political importance and demonstrate how a more nuanced typology (such as of different types of coastal community and different types of rural community) shed useful new insights on specific issues such as the debate over integration, problems of low educational attainment among the white working classes and the regeneration of seaside resorts.

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