@pennsif I think that Geographic Communities have a lot of potential.
There is also a new feature by SteemPeak that offers profile Badges and a few of them that I have seen are geographically specific. You can view the currently available Badges here: https://steempeak.com/badges
You can learn about creating badges here: https://steempeak.com/hive-175001/@steempeak/badge-creation-steps
I think that the combination of communities and badges could be a very good synergy.
Hi Jacob, yes not sure about the badges yet.
It will be interesting to see if the Badges also become Communities.
They make a single feed of all those that hold the Badge and people can easily subscribe to it which I think could be very awesome for keeping up with all the users in a geographic area regardless of if they are a Community member.
Below is an example of the Homesteaders Badge page found here: https://steempeak.com/b/badge-131313
As you can see the 'Accounts Feed' is created by folks that are recipients of the Badge and the Subscribe button lets anyone subscribe to that feed.
I will look more closely at the Badges when I have all the Communities connected in.
:) Right now they are doing the first fifty free. You may want to expedite your research.