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How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops
- aembleton 11y agoWhere did you get the data on coffee shops and chicken shops from?
- aembleton 11y agoI've just realised that this wasn't a `Show HN` so the submitter and the author may well be different people. I've left a comment on the medium article. The reason I ask is that I recently purchased a house in Manchester and as part of that collected as much data as possible on things like crime stats, walking time to nearest reailway station, cycling time to work, etc. I didn't get data on coffee or chicken shops. I did consider it, and would have pulled it from OSM but that data is very incomplete with regards to this sort of data.
- Xophmeister 11y agoThere's no justification for the assumption of a high coffee-to-chicken ratio implying up-and-coming. It's not an unreasonable assumption, but it's definitely anecdotal.
- coldtea 11y agoWell, as are most things in life, even in science before they are checked out -- they start as observations. The important thing is whether it serves well as a predictor. If we were that interested we could do a scientific analysis, counting coffee shops and chicken places in different urban areas, averaging incomes, checking trends etc. But since it's not that important to most of us, we can just use it as a kind of gauge of where things are going, and judge for ourselves if it has merit or not. Might help someone make a few bucks by buying property in the right area (although the most succesful of tose people already use this and a ton of other metrics, plus insider knowledge of future municipal plans etc).
- bossrat 11y agoright, which shows you the value of Big Data. Probably the best measures of real estate value trends are available not to real estate experts, but to Google starting with everybody's inboxes, combined with search, geolocation, etc.
- coldtea 11y agoHmm, yes, this raises an ethical issue too (kinda like "insider trading" but being "insider" for the whole world...)
- ubernostrum 11y agoIt's anecdotal, but enough reliable anecdotes do actually turn into "data". My personal marker has always been, when visiting a city for the first time, to pay attention to the roadside advertisements I see on the ride from the airport to the city center. Aside from obvious things like payday/title loan shops, the most reliable indicator I've seen of a neighborhood being badly off is ads for cheap dentures and dental implants.
- acgourley 11y agoWouldn't you want an area with both? I may be missing the context of London's culture - but if 'up and coming' means 'being gentrified' wouldn't you want to pick an area that has a barbell distribution of upper class and lower class establishments?
- slowmotiony 11y agoNot if you're buying property as an investment.
- toyg 11y agoWorst: some areas are very coffee-dense only because they're close to large transportation hubs, which usually don't make for great areas. Chicken shops gravitate towards entertainment areas, which may or may not be "up and coming".
- agounaris 11y agoInspiring assumption... I don't think Peckham is exactly your dream area :)
- dagw 11y agoNot today. But quite possible in 5-10 years, which is kind of the point the article was trying to make.
- anarchitect 11y agoMany of my friends are East London types who can no longer afford to live north of the river, and I have heard Peckham described as "the new Dalston" more than once. Perhaps it's got the right balance of edginess, location and affordability (I don't know Peckham at all).
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- onion2k 11y agoYou put a fried chicken shop in a place where lots of people go while you put a coffee shop in places where there are few coffee shops. I'm sure that correlates with 'up and coming', but it's not necessarily a signature. Some up and coming places will have neither.
- coldtea 11y ago>You put a fried chicken shop in a place where lots of people go I think the idea of the article is that you put one in a place where lots of the "wrong people" go. E.g. that "up and coming" urban professionals et al, don't go much for "fried chicken" -- as I understand in the US it's associated with rednecks, blacks, and the poor? (as opposed to Starbucks or Whole Foods).
- ubernostrum 11y agoYes, fried chicken is stereotypically a southern-US (poor part of the country, for a variety of historical reasons) and even more stereotypically African-American (poor segment of the population, similarly due to all sorts of historical issues from slavery to overt discrimination to more recent covert discrimination). Which means that fast-food restaurants specializing in fried chicken are a pretty strong economic marker. On the flip side, coffeeshops have a connotation of being more a middle-class thing. So tracking coffeeshops vs. fried chicken would be a very obvious way to map affluence in the US.
- coldtea 11y agoIn fact it sounds like a good premise for a Key and Peele sketch.
- provemewrong 11y ago>you put a coffee shop in places where there are few coffee shops Not where I live. Coffee shops (and bakeries, for that matter) over here usually cluster together, and when one opens, you can expect another one or two to open nearby, sometimes even next doors (in areas like "artistic" neighborhoods or next to universities). In the end there's like four to five coffee shops/bakeries next to each other with no possible explanation of how they're all still in business.
- sarreph 11y agoI don't necessarily agree with the premise of this article, as many other commenters point out. To offer an alternative, my own theory is that the 'up and coming' areas are cropping up down the Shoreditch fringe, i.e. Borough (which is seeing a lot of commercial and residential development, and Elephant & Castle (same as Borough, albeit more behind in completion). Such a 'fringe' also spills off into the East, too. You could extrapolate this trend to Peckham, one of the primary areas the author has highlighted, however I doubt we're going to get anywhere near same level of 'pop-up' commerce/entertainment in these much more southernly areas for some time to come indeed.
- dabeeeenster 11y agoProperty in Borough would be insanely expensive compared to Peckham...
- SixSigma 11y agoI would say that "coffee" = daytime activity and "chicken" = night time activity. What a data scientist would have done is find the list of shops and property prices and see which correlate. Of course, you also need to do it over time because "up and coming" implies the future state, not the current. 1. Buy cheap housing in area that attracts new grads / creatives / artists 2. Those people attract certain business types 3. Hot area attracts richer people + people in 1 get more money 4. Property prices rise 5. Sell
- rblstr 11y agoWow. Our 'up and coming' excuse for living in South London is actually turning out to be true.
- mattlutze 11y agoMy office computer is blocking Medium for some reason, but, certainly the choice of a fried chicken joint must be localized? There's a few regions of the US I've lived where fried chicken isn't really a thing, in general. I'm not sure that'd it would make sense to extend the model to those locations at least.
- azernik 11y agoIn the US, fried chicken has very specific associations - it's a classic marker of African-American ethnic food. So it might signify "up-and-coming", but for a very different reason, reflecting racial and ethnic displacement that comes with gentrification in historically-black neighborhoods.
- aroch 11y agoI think you're probably right, the inverse is seen in the US. In the South fast-food fried chicken is sometimes a marker for not-yet-gentrified areas of a city, but often it isn't. Fried chicken is an ingrained cultural tradition of the south, for both whites and blacks, and if you count any place selling fried chicken in your analysis you're actually likely to see more fried chicken in richer areas. At least that's my anecdotal observation. I live in a section of town that's becoming gentrified and while chains like Zaxby's and Krystal are slowly disappearing, but pretty much every "fine dining" and even casual dining (i.e. one step over Olive garden) place that has some southern-cuisine related riff serves fried chicken
- mhax 11y ago"Not many outlets selling fried chicken"... in Peckham?? I'm not sure the authors data is all that accurate.
- osullivj 11y agoI wasn't surprised to see that Tottenham seems to have the highest density of fried chicken. But I was surprised to see it seems to have more than SE LDN...
- jfg 11y agoYeah, looking at the Google maps location of chicken shops in Peckham brings up only about half the shops that are actually there.
- macNchz 11y agoNot sure where the data for the article came from, but I'd guess that there is some interesting socioeconomic skewing around the type of business and whether it can be readily found on Google maps or Yelp, since much of the data is crowdsourced.
- sfloy 11y agoTrue... the data came from Google Maps API and so maybe be a little incomplete compared to what's actually on the street at this moment
- notahacker 11y agoYeah, the data looks full of gaps. Can't believe there's none in Mitcham/Morden/Wimbledon either. The other issue is that the house prices start rising long before the fried chicken franchisees' leases expire and get taken over by fair trade coffee shops, artisanal bakeries and cereal bars. My street has two of the latter three, a real ale pub, a weekly "organic farmer's market" and a Waitrose but the pawnshops are still there.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoWell, China is definitely not an "up and coming" country. I've been here like a week and I already don't want to ever look at chicken in my life again.
- Ao7bei3s 11y agoI've never been to China -- what went wrong?
- striking 11y agoHe meant that there were so many chicken shops that he's tired of seeing chicken.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoI'm getting tired of eating all possible permutations of chicken and rice. They're very tasty, of course, but it's getting too monotonous for me at this point. Also everything that's not chicken and rice seems to be made out of sugar :<.
- mikeash 11y agoFunny, I'm in Beijing right now and there are coffee shops everywhere. You can pick a random street corner, close your eyes, throw a rock, and it will probably shatter the window of a coffee joint. And chicken dishes take at least a bit of effort to find, with pork being the king of meats, and beef a distant second. Aside from KFC, of course, which is all over.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoGreetings from Shenzhen. Lots of coffee shops here too, but chicken you can get absolutely everywhere. Pork is ubiquitous too. Beef, as far as I can tell, much less so. Also, the longer I'm staying here the more I'm getting cured out of obsessing over my energy use. The amount of propane a street vendor uses to prepare a single meal is greater than what I use up in an entire day.
- some1else 11y agoPeckham might be considered up and coming, but it doesn't look like much :-S https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4739728,-0.067718,3a,75y,268.12h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sCHT_LXgTtm5UYhcUDCg_uA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DCHT_LXgTtm5UYhcUDCg_uA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D194.82999%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1 https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4739728,-0.067718,3a,75y,268...
- octo_t 11y agoHow can you say that when there's an Armani shop right in there on the streetview!
- throwaway049 11y agoThis analysis is too broad-brush. Although London has richer and poorer neighborhoods, it is common for luxury property to be right across the street from much cheaper property.
- spacecowboy_lon 11y agoMuch cheaper in London terms is course < 1 million for a 2 bed flat.
- DannoHung 11y agoThis analysis would be tremendously racist in America.
- Paul_S 11y agoI'm not from America - care to explain?
- supercoder 11y agoBecause Koreans make great fried chicken.
- swalsh 11y agoThat wasn't the original stereotype he was describing, but koreans DO make great fried chicken. I'll take BonChon over KFC any day.
- 300bps 11y agoStereotype of African Americans is that they eat a lot of fried chicken so essentially this report would imply it is African Americans that make for a bad neighborhood.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- programmernews3 11y agoI think you mean black people
- BossHogg 11y agoNo African American is perfectly fine.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
- timwaagh 11y agothe theory is worth very little. you could identify two other random density factors (like cigarette butts and chelsea fans) and come up with some heatmap to identify the best value houses. only time-series data could give some indication and then you would still have to test it (and then the market would price in your findings shortly after they are published. this kind of arbitrage rarely lasts long).
- lujim 11y agoI don't think those are random density factors. I don't believe that darts were thrown at a wall with words written on them and they landed on "Coffee Shops" and "Fried Chicken". I think the analysis started with the assumption that Coffee shops would be found in nicer areas and Fried Chicken would be found in rougher areas. Then the analysis was started to evaluate that hypothesis. It's OK that areas of with different economic conditions may have different types of businesses. Buying a house next to a check cashing shop or a pay day lender will nearly 100% guarantee you aren't living in the best neighborhood.
- dbattaglia 11y agoWould be interesting to see this done for Brooklyn, which has a lot of "up-and-coming" areas and a plethora of fried chicken and coffee shops.
- GBond 11y agoProblem with Brooklyn is that high-end hipster friend chicken sandwiches is the latest trendy food.
- djtriptych 11y agoThe problem with resilient neighborhoods in Brooklyn is high numbers of black home ownership.
- smikhanov 11y agoA more interesting indicator that authors may consider is how many people living in the area do jogging. When I moved to London's SE4 postcode three years ago (it's pretty close to Peckham, FWIW), the regeneration of the area has just started and the more middle-class looking people appeared around, the more men and women in running gear were visible in the streets in the morning. Poor on average take worse care of their health and fitness, so tapping into Runkeeper's data may prove useful. In the meanwhile, during these three years, the value of my home grew more than 100%.
- hueving 11y agoThat only works if outdoor jogging is strong in the culture. I've spent time in France and jogging through the neighborhood I was in (mid class) was quite out of place.
- digital_ins 11y agoto what you're saying - I would think jogging would be a prime example of 'network' effect. If you head out to Beverly Hills, you don't see anyone jogging except the dog walkers. But in certain parts of say, Hyderabad in India, the super-rich areas have massive number of 'walkers' (even though the air is highly polluted and walking there is probably detrimental)
- notacoward 11y agoNot a bad idea, but you'd have to adjust for age. There are tons of joggers around every college campus, for example, but those tend not to be great places for anyone else to live. Measuring at different times of day might be interesting too. As a runner (not jogger) myself, I do notice that there are very different kinds of people running at different times. The older folks tend to go out in the morning, while the late-afternoon crowds are distinctly young looking. Lunch-break and off-hour crowds are both in between. Which of these says what about home values or general desirability? I don't know, but it would be interesting to see the results.
- tetrep 11y agoI wonder if the various fitness apps would be willing to open their data to studies. It would be incredibly interesting to see an exercise heatmap overlayed with various other ones, especially housing prices.
- PeterStuer 11y agoYou might also look at where the city plans to create new pedestrian areas and bicycle lanes. Absence of car traffic makes real-estate prices soar.
- huskyr 11y agoWe made this (Dutch) dataviz a couple of months ago about the gentrification of Amsterdam, and indeed, the number of yoga studios and coffee bars closely resembled the gentrificated areas: http://www.volkskrant.nl/amsterdam http://www.volkskrant.nl/amsterdam
- swalsh 11y agoAs a lover of fried chicken, i'm not sure this is the right metric to use for my housing search.
- sotoer 11y agoAnother "up and coming"-ness indicator is the abundance of white guys walking around the neighborhood wearing small shorts.
- artur_makly 11y agoback in the early 90's nyc , it was when you started seeing French bars.
- ethbro 11y ago> Poor on average take worse care of their health and fitness Not intended to be snarky, as I grok the intent of your comment, but poor also don't typically have time to come home and go for an hour jog with frequency during the week.
- Arnt 11y agoThat brings to mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyoNHIl-QLQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyoNHIl-QLQ But yes, you might say something like "don't typically have the energy do do more than plop down in front of the telly when they come home".
- yummyfajitas 11y agoIs this true? The general stereotype when I lived in the UK is that the poor were mostly non-workers who subsisted based on public assistance. If true, then they have plenty of time. In the US this is certainly true. The lowest earning category has 30 minutes/day more leisure time than the highest. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11.htm Anyone know where to find the UK equivalent of the ATUS?
- pdpi 11y agoWorking crazy hours across three jobs to make ends meet is definitely a thing, and not at all rare.
- ptaipale 11y agoHowever, just based on my prejudices, I'd claim that those that do work crazy hours across three jobs typically do not need to go jogging, they get some exercise when moving from one job to another. They are also not necessarily the poorest in the income poverty sense, although their situation is quite clearly the most unfair.
- pnut 11y agoI've got an uncle who works construction. He's adamant that his free time not be spent doing physical activity.
- angdis 11y agoMy "rule-of-thumb" indicator: whether or not there are a lot of check-cashing, bail-bond and furniture rental establishments.
- Implicated 11y agoSame principle applies to 'big chain' type retailers and such. If the local grocery stores aren't large regional chain stores... likely not a good area.
- alsetmusic 11y agoThe opposite can also be true. Secluded neighborhoods with lots of small mom-and-pop shops instead of commercial giants may be a location driver. My nearest chain is only a mile away but my community is built around a strip of independent shops.
- nemo44x 11y agoWhat does "likely not a good area" mean? In NYC there are plenty of "nice areas" that don't have major chain stores. In many cities this is the case. I grow tired of the underlying racism people exhibit (such as yours) without even being aware of it. You're probably not a blatant racist but I think a lot of people from mainstream white culture need to start inspecting and criticizing their view of the world a bit more. There are a lot of good people living in what you call "not a good area".
- defen 11y ago> What does "likely not a good area" mean Street crime (muggings / random unprovoked assaults); petty vandalism; burglary; schools where your kid will get beat up for exhibiting the slightest amount of intellectual curiosity or non-standard behaviors / appearance.
- waterlesscloud 11y agoYeah, this definitely only holds up to a certain income level. Then small local chains hold sway once again.
- scottlilly 11y agoIf you want to dig deeper into this, I suggest reading "The Clustering of America", by Michael J. Weiss. I think some of the key indicators it used were number of bowling alleys, liquor stores, and payphones (keep in mind, it was published in 1989).
- Shivetya 11y agoSo besides "chicken shops" which must be a regional indicator for poor or undesirable what other establishments are also present? There should be an obvious transition type of business that precedes the coffee shop. Combined with chicken shops perhaps the availability of different businesses could give entrepreneurs an indicator where to set up similar or buy up space?
- djhworld 11y agoEstate agents, particularly ones that specialise in rentals. London has a horrendous housing problem at the moment.
- arethuza 11y agoI'd look at what type of cars are parked in the street at night.
- czbond 11y agoNow that's an interesting indicator - many of these are variations of the same theme and lagging indicators. Yours is (except for areas in immediate transitions) a real time indicator idea. At least in the US.
- arethuza 11y agoIt would definitely work in the UK as well - especially as you can tell the age of a car from the number-plate. Find a run down area and track the number of newer family cars or BMWs/Audis.
- branchless 11y agoKnew this would be the UK before I even clicked on it from the phrase. Choose carefully as your housing "investment" will mean as much as your ability to program to your life outcome.
- pinaceae 11y agohmm, this is local. for cities in central europe like berlin, munich, vienna the indicators for poor neighborhoods are mobile-phone repairshops, internet cafés and kebab/döner/falafel places. immigrants from the south-east, from turkey to afghanistan shaping these areas. as nicely illustrated in the current episodes of Homeland.
- fowkswe 11y agoIf the assumption is that fried chicken places are a relic of a poorer past, then this metric does not work for New York City. Fried chicken is the food of the moment: http://www.villagevoice.com/restaurants/the-ten-best-fried-chicken-sandwiches-in-new-york-7406101 http://www.villagevoice.com/restaurants/the-ten-best-fried-c...
- benjsto 11y agoYeah, confusingly, I live in a currently gentrifying hipster neighborhood of Minneapolis, of all places, and there is a hot new fried chicken restaurant that is always so full you have to wait 2 hours to get a table.
- thinksocrates 11y agoThis would not be an effective method for the Southern USA. Nashville, which is most certainly up and coming, is also springing up "Hot Chicken" shacks left and right in the hippest areas.
- dec0dedab0de 11y agoThis was kind of interesting, I like the idea of using data like this, you could probably get the same results with yoga studios and cash4gold's. That being said I want coffee and fried chicken now.
- perrywky 11y agoironically Peckham ranks the Most Dangerous Places in London http://www.thetoptens.com/most-dangerous-places-london/ http://www.thetoptens.com/most-dangerous-places-london/
- analyst74 11y agoHe seems to be measuring current housing prices, but if his goal is to measure "up and coming" areas, shouldn't he try to correlate between ratio of fried chicken vs coffee shops in PREVIOUS years, and change of prices in the following years?
- mariodiana 11y agoI'm thinking that coffee shops are not a leading indicator, which is what he should be looking for. I have no idea what would be leading indicator for up and coming neighborhoods though.
- batuhanicoz 11y agoIn Istanbul, this also holds true. But you would need to switch "friend chicken" to "tavuk döner" (chicken döner) or to kebab places. Looking for places that's gonna be "elite"? Switch coffee shops with third wave coffee shops. At least in Istanbul.
- JackFr 11y agoThis analysis is simplistic and flawed. It asserts a correlation between the fried chicken/coffee shop ratio index and home price, which is reasonable enough. It then assumes that homes that are undervalued vis-a-vis their implied value by the FC/CS index are up and coming. This likely makes sense in an environment of overall rising house prices. However if house prices are falling or stagnant overall it may be the coffee shops which are lagging the market.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoSo it just missing a term then? Add in rising prices and call it a day?
- thanatropism 11y agoThe Fritsch-Waugh-Lovell theorem: if y = ax + by + cz + (zero-mean nuisance), I can estimate a least-squares model of the form y' = ax + b*y + (zero-mean nuisance) and get a correct estimate of b, as long as y and z are uncorrelated. (Where this breaks down: for example, a regression of IQ on age and arm length; omit age and you'll get longer arms (older kids) producing higher IQ scores, because age and arm length are correlated.)
- wuliwong 11y agoIf I am understanding you correctly it seems that you only have an issue if coffee shop count is 'lagging the market' but you never actually say whether you believe it is? It seems that you are just pointing out the obvious; this person's analysis assumes that coffee shop count is a leading indicator but you are not giving any reason why this is a flawed assumption.
- sabujp 11y agoIn the US it's school testing scores
- melgibo12 11y ago1. This is not even wrong. 2. Fried chicken and coffee shops seem like a proxy for class and race in London and were deliberately chosen by the author. Yuppies...
- pc86 11y ago1. I'm not sure what your #1 is supposed to mean. 2. Of course they are and were.
- chishaku 11y agoI was thinking about yoga studios as a proxy for this type of analysis the other day.
- gcb0 11y ago1. buy cheap houses 2. buy fried chicken places and convert them to coffee shops 3. ??? 4. profit!
- EMRo 11y agoI would love to build/use an app that generates RE investment market suggestions based on some of the datapoints you're mentioning. Maybe see if there's some way to automate the analysis of socioeconomic status of the neighborhood with the distribution of various types of businesses and then map price/price delta over time. Might be some cool data in there. Re racism comments...kinda.
- beachstartup 11y agoin greater LA, fried chicken is actually a new trend in higher-end casual dining, because of the east asian influence on local cuisine (korean, japanese, taiwanese). oftentimes it's served out of coffee shops. or tea houses. go figure.
- MisterBastahrd 11y agoPoor community: bail bonds, pawn shop, payday loans, dollar store, cash checking Affluent community: party planning, wine shop, dessert specialty shop, boutique clothing, european car dealership
- WorldMaker 11y agoClearly this analysis would be a flawed approach to take for the American South. Especially given that right now "hot chicken" places are a hipster fad for the "up and coming" neighborhoods.
- softyeti 11y agoI would also look at the open dates for those businesses as well if available for better trending.
- squozzer 11y agoSo who exactly eats fried chicken in the UK?
- twic 11y agoPeople who don't drink a lot of coffee.
- logfromblammo 11y agoIn the U.S., a leading indicator of future development in suburban or rural areas is often the self-storage business. They are often built out in the middle of nowhere when land is cheap, and continue operating as other businesses are built nearby. Many of them are owned by large REITs that are speculating on land values. The business pays the property taxes as the value of the land rises. Chicken shops flipping to coffee shops may predict urban gentrification, but the self-storage business predicts cornfields turning into Wal*Marts.