Our Neighbors, Ourselves: We Are Where We Live : THE CLUSTERING OF AMERICA <i> by Michael J. Weiss (A Tilden Press Book/ Harper & Row: $22.50; 416 pp.; illustrated; 0-06-015790-9) </i>

This sensitizing study of American life styles integrates census data, nationwide consumer surveys and hundreds of interviews, in the process transforming a country of 225,000 neighborhoods and 36,000 ZIP codes into a mosaic of 40 fascinating life-style “clusters.”

Based on the Potential Rating Index for Zip Markets (PRIZM) developed by Claritas Corp., the cluster system transforms the dry demographic data that have previously defined us into a dynamic account of where we-the-people are and where we’re going. Drawing on the system and personal visits to cluster communities, Michael J. Weiss ingeniously documents the robust diversity of a nation that is continually “churning riches and changing values”--and busily cluster climbing.

For this journey through America’s distinctive clusters--each with its own Zip Quality (ZQ) rating--Weiss has created an indispensable target marketing guide for anyone seeking consumer locations on the ZQ ladder. He demolishes what he calls “The Myth of the Average American” by breaking down cultural stereotypes to reveal how big companies can benefit from thinking small. Indeed, he makes the 40 clusters seem like personal neighborhoods--despite an itinerary produced by a dispassionate computer.

Encouragingly, Weiss’ America has not been reduced to a “single pale village” by Muzak and homogenization. In fact, he pays tribute to CBS-TV correspondent Charles Kuralt’s observation that “Americans are made of some alloy that won’t be melted.”

More than a mere Standard Rate & Data Service companion text for media buyers, “The Clustering of America” is a handbook for strategists to determine values and behavior that concern them. Whether in publishing or politics, food, fashion or travel, real estate or finance, anyone with a better mousetrap had better look first through the PRIZM and read Weiss. Selective market sampling is a more expensive route to similar information. Small wonder then that a Coca-Cola vice president told the author he keeps one of two office computers loaded with Claritas’ cluster software.

Weiss has also produced an anecdotal compendium of Americana that illustrates how clusters drive everything from recruiting soldiers to winning the affections of Wok owners in the top five Wok-owner Claritas clusters: “God’s Country,” “Young Influentials,” “Furs & Station Wagons,” “Young Suburbia” and “Pools & Patios.” We learn that readers of Working Woman tend to be “Bohemian Mix,” “Two More Rungs,” “Gray Power,” “Black Enterprise” and “Emergent Minorities,” while Better Homes & Gardens has cornered “Furs and Station Wagons,” “Blue Blood Estates,” “Coalburg & Corntown,” “Young Suburbia” and “Black Enterprise.”

We meet “cluster climbers” from ZQ 39 “Hard Scrabble” settlements in West Virginia and Arizona, and ZQ 6 “Two More Rungs” residents of comfortable multi-ethnic suburbs from Flushing to Rancho Park. Heavy users of Audis and frozen entrees, they are probably heading for ZQ 3 “Furs & Station Wagons” status in Glastonbury, Conn. and Pomona, Calif.

Do ZQ 7 “Young Influentials” in Redondo Beach, Calif., and Greenbelt, Md., really sip Perrier while watching “L.A. Law” after a tough workout at the club? Don’t they ever watch roller derby or drive Dodge Diplomats? Do ZQ 1 “Blue Blood Estates” folks in Beverly Hills, Bloomfield Hills and Scarsdale buy groin irritation remedies? Why are “Blue Blood Estates” in the top heavy-metal and classical music listener groups? Do ZQ 30 “Back-Country Folks” actually chew tobacco and keep chain saws in their garages in Caribou, Me., and Spring Hill, Tenn.? Any Ferrari drivers or book buyers among them--or in ZQ 29 “Mines & Mills”?

Can a ZQ 19 “Towns & Gowns” single from a college town such as Bloomington, Ind. find happiness with a ZQ 4 “Urban Gold Coast” single from Rincon East, San Francisco? (At least they can watch “Late Night with David Letterman” and play tennis together--their only major mutual interests.)

Why would one of America’s wealthiest persons, by all rights a ZQ 2 “Money & Brains” candidate, choose life in a remote ZQ 25 “Golden Ponds” hamlet in the Ozarks known for reliance on hand tools, snuff and canned meat spreads?

The answers to these and other gnawing questions are found in the book’s 40 handy PRIZM-coded cluster snapshot charts that are certain to become well-thumbed references.

Word watchers, too, will be intrigued by terms such as Yurpies (young rural professionals) and the colorful cluster-tech lingo. Perhaps “What cluster are you?” will replace “What sign are you?” as a conversation opener.

But hang onto your Hellman’s and spread your Miracle Whip while you can, because “flavor boundaries” have staked out our clusters. A kind of “mayonnaise line” splits America’s heartland from coast to coast. “The Mayonnaise Line divides the creamy Hellman’s buyers in the South and Northeast from the tart Kraft Miracle Whip lovers in the Midwest and Northwest,” Weiss notes. The line (which divides California at Santa Barbara) could be unsettling to a ZQ 21 “Middle America”-bred Miracle Whip devotee transplanted from Marshall, Mich., to a ZQ 18 “New Melting Pot” Los Feliz neighborhood where pumpernickel and rye bread enjoy high usage (along with The New Yorker, mutual funds and wine by the case). A Miracle Whip shortage in Los Angeles might presage a population drift to another “New Melting Pot” neighborhood such as Geary in San Francisco.

The aforementioned Marshall, “a classic ‘Middle America’ community,” is at the country’s socioeconomic midpoint, although, because of neighborhood influences of race, ethnicity and urbanization, Weiss finds that no single “Average American” exists. Here, as in corresponding neighborhoods such as Hagerstown, Md., and Oshkosh, Wis., domestic air charters, mail-order catalogues, Plymouth Sundances, pizza mixes and “Newhart” enjoy their finest cluster hours.

Yet “Middle America” is not all-powerful; home to only 3.2% of the nation’s households, it’s half as populous as ZQ 10, rated “Blue-Chip Blues.” However, as Weiss says, by understanding a “Middle America” haven like Marshall--where “there is no ‘other side of the tracks,’ ” a band plays Sousa marches in the park every Thursday in July and life has few extremes--”it is possible to discern an ‘average’ cluster by using the ZQ scale of social rank.”

And there’s the author’s gentle thought that “in a Marshall, little is eaten, driven or purchased at rates far from the national average . . . Residents know too well that the balance that characterizes Middle America is more precious than the breeze of a cool July night.”

Defending America’s “brave new clustered world” against the specters of “Orwellian voodoo” and power-brokering product specialists with faith in Americans’ “roaring” diversity, Weiss predicts that “tomorrowland” technology will perform such wonders as helping new physicians find high-paying work outside big cities with physician gluts--”in communities with cushy life styles. Not every intern need be sent to a health-care backwater in Tobacco Roads,” he adds. (Need any be sent, the reader may wonder.) Also on Weiss’ horizon: “general interest” magazines with content shaped according to readers’ zip codes, cluster-tailored “video boutique” television instead of a mass medium. Local news with a vengeance!

Like it or not, “The Clustering of America” is here, with all its technological potential for use and abuse. Since knowledge is power, we can thank Weiss for explaining it to us clearly--through a PRIZM.

Flavor Boundaries

Flavor boundaries criss-cross the nation, reflecting the same factors of ethnicity, social rank and household composition that define neighborhood settlement. A kind of “mayonnaise line” separates the creamy Hellman’s mayonnaise buyers to the South from the tart Kraft Miracle Whip salad dressing lovers to the North. A marketer of a spicy new dressing would know not to dip below the Mason-Dixon Line to market its product.