At work recently I’ve been involved in some conversations about what distinguishes Amherst (especially downtown) from other places. Here’s my answer: we are a mix of urban & rural and of young/modern and old/historical. I jotted down this diagram on some scrap paper, and here cleaned it up to show to you.
The way these charts are supposed to work, the concepts would be at various locations around the grid depending on how much they embody the characteristics. But this chart is just a sketch to demonstrate the components of town that I think best exemplify the different quadrants.
Obviously there are some nuances here: cafes should be in the upper left too, and Barry’s hard to pin down as both an old-New-England farmer and a downtown developer. But what do you think of the general conceptualization of Amherst?