People have personalities, and so do neighborhoods. A neighborhood’s character describes its personality and the feeling one gets when experiencing the neighborhood as a true resident. Quiet and sophisticated? Hip and walkable? The length of the Special Character bars on a NeighborhoodScout's Demographics tab indicate the percentage of neighborhoods in America that this neighborhood is more Urbane than, more Hip than, more Quiet than, more Nautical than, more Walkable than.

Nautical: Historic, seaside neighborhoods.

Walkable: Easy to navigate on foot.

Quiet: A measure of how quiet the neighborhood is. We came up with this quantitative measure by seeking the opposite of what we knew to be more noisy – dense population, lots of college students, renters, and children. So quiet neighborhoods have a mathematically defined combination of elements that lead to less noise, more quiet.

Hip and Trendy: Some character akin to Greenwich Village or Harvard Square.

Urban Sophisticates: Wealthy, educated, executives and professionals, who have urbane tastes in books, food, and travel, whether they actually live in a big city, or choose to reside in a small town. In big or medium-sized cities, urban sophisticates tend to frequent art institutions such as opera, symphonies, ballet, live theatre, and museums.