The Battle of the Neighborhoods

This blog was submitted for the ‘Applied Data Science with Python

Specialisation’  an IBM-Coursera MOOC’s Capstone Project

requirement, known as ‘The Battle of the Neighborhoods’.

The chosen scenario was the following business case, a relocation adviser has to make recommendations to clients

who will move to one of the cities  listed in the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU’s) Liveability Index.

Using the share resources any of the 140 listed cities decision cards' can be reproduced. 

The incident of a person who has two job offers, one in Manhattan, New York and another in York, Toronto

was tackled here. They are undecided as both cities are very diverse and are the financial capital of their respective

countries, both jobs are equally attractive with living expenses being taken care of in both cases. 

The client is Parisian and would  like to maintain their lifestyle:

- They want to keep the habit of taking walks to and from work and

- is picky eater, they only eat at restaurants,

- wants to be in a crime free environment,

- away from congestion and public transport problems

- but at the same time is addicted to the ‘big city buzz’, with its

prestigious hubs and a wealth of recreational activities!

A ‘big city buzz’ factor was created using the top 5 venues listed by folium for each cluster and then merged to the EIU’s

index to balance to create Word Cloud Cards, which were the tools to make decisions on:

- Whether Manhattan, New York or York, Toronto will offer the ‘big city buzz’, but not be too challenging to live in. 

- Which of the neighbourhood cluster are will be a better home away from home from Reuil Paris

While the Tailor Made Liveability Index, included  not only the challenges that are faced

in a big city by merging the EIU’s index with the ‘big city buzz’ factor so very much sought

after by city dwellers. Here is an aerial view of Battery Park City it was part of the New York,

Manhattan clusters which was pushed, which also includes the neighbourhoods of ,

Morningside Heights and Roosevelt Island, these neighbourhoods offers suburban

living in the Heart of New York City comparable to that of Reuilly, Paris.

After much data mining, munging and visualizations the bias of the EIU’s index was revealed.

It shows a clear preference for lower density and less built up cities, like Toronto over the big buzz in the big apple, New York, whoes card is above, and that of York, Toronto below. As you can see York Toronto, is dominated by EIU's features and is the 'safe' but boring option. Not at all what the adventurous client is seeking!!! 

See the Report & ipynb which host the details of and word clouds for the clusters and html files for the leaf maps such as shown below!!!

...

Linda Angulo Lopez Environmental Consultant Contact information: linkedin 

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Dr Chuck (PY4E - Python for Everybody ),

Alex Aklson (IBM Data Science Professional Certificate | Coursera),

and the volunteer mentors on Coursera all of whom helped me fly with python.