A9 Counties
Much of Charture's research focuses on nine U.S. counties it refers to as the "A9," or "Archetypal 9." In Charture's view, the types of growth and change affecting these nine counties are archetypal of the growth and change occurring in all PEAS communities: resorts, gateways, and all other places located in beautiful natural settings.
Charture focuses on counties because they are the smallest political unit uniformly measured by the federal government. The A9 are nine counties located in five states:
Colorado: Eagle County (location of Vail ski area); Pitkin County (Aspen ski area); Routt County (Steamboat Springs ski area); San Miguel County (Telluride ski area); Summit County (Breckenridge ski area)
Idaho: Blaine County (Sun Valley ski area)
Massachusetts: Nantucket County (Nantucket Island)
Utah: Summit County (Park City ski area)
Wyoming: Teton County (Grand Teton National Park; Jackson Hole ski area)
Besides being home to some of America's most well-known resorts, the A9 are joined by several other qualities, including geographic isolation, rapid population growth, and rapid increase in economic indicators such as incomes and home prices. Further, they are beloved by residents and visitors alike.
But what makes them of most interest to Charture is a fact which Charture discovered in 2006.
There are roughly 3,140 counties in America. According to the Census Bureau, between 1980 and 1990, the 10 counties which experienced the biggest increase in median housing value were New York City, San Francisco, six counties near New York and San Francisco, and Pitkin, Colorado (location of Aspen) and Nantucket, Massachusetts (location of Nantucket Island).
From an economic theory perspective, this made perfect sense: the biggest increases in home values came in the location of America's two biggest financial centers, their suburbs, and the places where the well-to-do went to play in the summer and winter.
What made far less sense is what happened during the 1990s. Thanks to the dot-com boom, the 1990s were a period of incredible wealth creation in America, especially for New York investment bankers and Silicon Valley dot-commers. Yet between 1990 and 2000, the 10 American counties which experienced the biggest increase in median home values were:
- New York, NY (island of Manhattan)- $512,700 (increase in median home value)
- Pitkin, CO (Aspen) - $297,200
- Nantucket, MA (Nantucket Island) - $278,100
- Eagle, CO (Vail) - $233,200
- Teton, WY (Grand Teton NP; Jackson Hole) - $232,000
- San Miguel, CO (Telluride) - $206,400
- Summit, CO (Breckenridge) - $196,000
- Summit, UT (Park City) - $188,200
- Routt, CO (Steamboat) - $173,600
- Blaine, ID (Sun Valley) - $161,400
No New York suburbs. No San Francisco/Silicon Valley suburbs. No San Francisco or Silicon Valley at all, for that matter. Instead, during the 1990s, the 10 counties which saw the biggest increase in median home value were New York City and nine resort communities: one off the Massachusetts coast; eight in the northern Rockies.