5 ms·

A 15-minute-city analyser using OSM data. You gave it a list of everything you wanted to be close to (ie a school, restaurant, doctors office, food store etc.)

by dagw 3y ago

A 15-minute-city analyser using OSM data. You gave it a list of everything you wanted to be close to (ie a school, restaurant, doctors office, food store etc.) and it would show you which parts of a given city had all those things with an N minute walk.

ramesh1994 3y ago
Hey this sounds pretty cool! If this is public would you mind sharing a link?
- dagw 3y ago
  The code never advanced beyond some hack scripts and a Jupyter notebook. Cleaning it up and perhaps making it into web app has been on my todo list for the past 2-3 years. Maybe this reminder will be the kick I need to actually do something about it.
  - ramesh1994 3y ago
    Sorry I don't know how hackernews notifications work, didn't see this reply. But if you see this here's another reminder for you to clean this up into a public demo :)
- iskandery 3y ago
  Not the OP, but I've actually made something like that to help people figure out where to live in London based on the criteria they care about -- here it is https://findmyarea.co.uk/?search_type=areas https://findmyarea.co.uk/?search_type=areas Would be great to see similar tools for other cities!
  - petargyurov 3y ago
    This is amazing! I am curious what algorithm is behind the scenes? And how easy would it be to make this work for any city?
    - iskandery 3y ago
      Thanks! It's a bit outdated now but I wrote up an explanation a while back that gives the general idea behind the scoring algorithm: https://findmyarea.co.uk/blog/how-findmyarea-works/ https://findmyarea.co.uk/blog/how-findmyarea-works/ In principle it should be possible to do the same for any city. The hardest part is getting the data and massaging it into shape, which can be somewhat tedious. London is a fairly "easy" city for this due to the large amount of open data that's readily available from the ONS and the like.
      - ramesh1994 3y ago
        This is really cool! Appreciate sharing this work and the explanation. You mentioned that massaging the data into shape as one of the problems, which I think is possibly one of the best applications of LLMs in my opinion. Creating a pipeline of a data feed (still hard) into an LLM which outputs JSON with the fields of interest would be amazing.
bob88jg 3y ago
Fascist! How dare you suggest I shouldn't ever go further than 15 minutes to access necessary resources to live my life! It's my god given right to spend at least an hour in traffic to get to the doctors... /s there is actually a whole movement of people in the UK that beleive the very idea of a 15 minute city is a conspiracy to limit their freedoms...
- Tabular-Iceberg 3y ago
  That’s hardly a fair characterization. The problem is simply one of putting the cart before the horse. Most people simply can’t afford to live within a 15 minute walk of a doctor’s office and there is no real plan in place to fix that.
  - dagw 3y ago
    there is no real plan in place to fix that. The plan is to identify where there are a lot of people living but there aren't any doctors offices within 15 minute walk, and then find the optimal places to open new doctors offices to cover as many people as possible that don't currently have a doctors office within a 15 minute walk.
    - Tabular-Iceberg 3y ago
      Nobody’s objecting to just sound urban planning. The problem is when you don’t have it and use license plate readers or physical barricades as a band-aid.
      - dagw 3y ago
        license plate readers or physical barricades as a band-aid What does any of that have to do with 15 minute cities?
        Tabular-Iceberg 3y ago
        In the UK they're called Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. It's what's at the very heart of the 15 minute city controversy. Why would people complain about being able to walk to where they need to go? It's obviously being cut off from the places that they aren't able to walk to that people have a problem with. Deflecting from one by pretending it's about the other is a clear sign of bad faith.

by dagw 3y ago

ramesh1994 3y ago

Hey this sounds pretty cool! If this is public would you mind sharing a link?

dagw 3y ago
The code never advanced beyond some hack scripts and a Jupyter notebook. Cleaning it up and perhaps making it into web app has been on my todo list for the past 2-3 years. Maybe this reminder will be the kick I need to actually do something about it.
- ramesh1994 3y ago
  Sorry I don't know how hackernews notifications work, didn't see this reply. But if you see this here's another reminder for you to clean this up into a public demo :)
iskandery 3y ago
Not the OP, but I've actually made something like that to help people figure out where to live in London based on the criteria they care about -- here it is https://findmyarea.co.uk/?search_type=areas https://findmyarea.co.uk/?search_type=areas Would be great to see similar tools for other cities!
- petargyurov 3y ago
  This is amazing! I am curious what algorithm is behind the scenes? And how easy would it be to make this work for any city?
  - iskandery 3y ago
    Thanks! It's a bit outdated now but I wrote up an explanation a while back that gives the general idea behind the scoring algorithm: https://findmyarea.co.uk/blog/how-findmyarea-works/ https://findmyarea.co.uk/blog/how-findmyarea-works/ In principle it should be possible to do the same for any city. The hardest part is getting the data and massaging it into shape, which can be somewhat tedious. London is a fairly "easy" city for this due to the large amount of open data that's readily available from the ONS and the like.
    - ramesh1994 3y ago
      This is really cool! Appreciate sharing this work and the explanation. You mentioned that massaging the data into shape as one of the problems, which I think is possibly one of the best applications of LLMs in my opinion. Creating a pipeline of a data feed (still hard) into an LLM which outputs JSON with the fields of interest would be amazing.

bob88jg 3y ago

Fascist! How dare you suggest I shouldn't ever go further than 15 minutes to access necessary resources to live my life! It's my god given right to spend at least an hour in traffic to get to the doctors... /s there is actually a whole movement of people in the UK that beleive the very idea of a 15 minute city is a conspiracy to limit their freedoms...

Tabular-Iceberg 3y ago
That’s hardly a fair characterization. The problem is simply one of putting the cart before the horse. Most people simply can’t afford to live within a 15 minute walk of a doctor’s office and there is no real plan in place to fix that.
- dagw 3y ago
  there is no real plan in place to fix that. The plan is to identify where there are a lot of people living but there aren't any doctors offices within 15 minute walk, and then find the optimal places to open new doctors offices to cover as many people as possible that don't currently have a doctors office within a 15 minute walk.
  - Tabular-Iceberg 3y ago
    Nobody’s objecting to just sound urban planning. The problem is when you don’t have it and use license plate readers or physical barricades as a band-aid.
    - dagw 3y ago
      license plate readers or physical barricades as a band-aid What does any of that have to do with 15 minute cities?
      - Tabular-Iceberg 3y ago
        In the UK they're called Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. It's what's at the very heart of the 15 minute city controversy. Why would people complain about being able to walk to where they need to go? It's obviously being cut off from the places that they aren't able to walk to that people have a problem with. Deflecting from one by pretending it's about the other is a clear sign of bad faith.