7 ms·

I made an interactive map a year ago to explore the same question (where do you live taking into account factors like income, weather, walkability, crime, educa

by fibbery 12y ago

I made an interactive map a year ago to explore the same question (where do you live taking into account factors like income, weather, walkability, crime, education, politics, etc), check it out if you are interested http://two88cities.herokuapp.com/ http://two88cities.herokuapp.com/

avalaunch 12y ago
That is really awesome. I love it. The one thing that would make it really useful to me in the next year as my family decides where to move is the inclusion of public grade school/high school national rankings. I've been looking for some way to easily cross reference cost of living with quality of public schools.
- fibbery 12y ago
  Nice idea, and super important for choosing where to live.
pimlottc 12y ago
I assume you just grabbed photos off Flickr? Some of them seem pretty random. I'm from Cleveland and I have no idea where this picture is from. http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3683/9286810188_548716198e_n.jpg http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3683/9286810188_548716198e_n.j...
- fibbery 12y ago
  Yep, I just did searches on Flickr and grabbed ones that I liked tagged with the city, but they could be totally wrong!
lotharbot 12y ago
This is beautiful. I'm curious, did you use it to move? Are you happy with the move? Would you change certain factors or add anything? I'm also curious about how you evaluated diversity. For example, my current city and one I'm intimately familiar with (Denver) scores only a 2 on diversity, while Boston scores a 5. Ethnically, both cities' largest demographic is non-hispanic whites (Denver 52%, Boston 47% -- not tremendously different; when you add in suburbs Boston is considerably whiter than Denver). The next two groups for Denver are Hispanic or Latino (32%) and Black or African American (10%), and for Boston Black or African American (24%) and Hispanic or Latino (17%). Again, these don't seem tremendously different to me. Denver has the largest Mongolian population in the United States, hosts one of the largest Native American Pow-Wows in the country, and has had 2 Black mayors and one Hispanic mayor (Boston has never elected a non-white mayor.) I realize there are other forms of diversity, but Denver does fairly well on those too (for example, 5.8% of Denver's population is LGBT; Boston is a slightly higher 6.2%.) Point being, I don't understand what criteria were used to score these cities on opposite ends of the diversity spectrum given that they both seem fairly diverse to my eye.
- bostonvaulter2 12y ago
  I'm curious about the diversity score as well. Honolulu only gets a 3 out of 6! http://two88cities.herokuapp.com/cities/details/342/Hawai'i/Honolulu http://two88cities.herokuapp.com/cities/details/342/Hawai'i/...
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  Wild speculation: diversity could be measured via the density of "ethnic" phrases in business names. When I lived in Boston I noticed a high density of small ethnic grocery stores / eateries vs what I was used to in Denver. Within a radius of a few blocks from where I lived in Boston I had a Korean store, an Indian store, a Vietnamese restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, a Korean restaurant, and an Italian restaurant (none of which were franchised). In Denver I had a deli, a bunch of franchised fast food, and franchised ethnic food (Chipotle, Olive Garden, etc). My anecdata would score Boston as more diverse in this sense.
  - lotharbot 12y ago
    I suspect your anecdata is limited to a few neighborhoods in Denver. Ever drive on south Federal? It's all Korean grocery stores and Mexican restaurants.
- Fishkins 12y ago
  Although the page is great overall, I was also skeptical of the diversity scores. I looked at some of the cities I've lived in, and noticed that Madison, WI and NYC both score 3. That can't be right.
  - fibbery 12y ago
    Yeah, it was just my attempt at calculating it based on census data. If I were to update it I would do so using a more standardized score like gini-simpson, which I was unaware of at the time...
rdl 12y ago
Unsurprisingly, it tells me Vancouver, WA is pretty good for me. I'm still not sure where exactly in WA is best (Seattle/Bellevue/etc. would be the default choice, Vancouver is appealing, and there is some interest due to other non-tech activities in central WA), but WA seems pretty ideal overall.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Might as well just live in Portland then, since you'd be working and shopping ere anyways. And let's not forget the exploding mountain problem. Bellingham is nice and they even have some tech there.
  - rdl 12y ago
    OR has better gun laws, strip clubs, sales tax, WA has better income taxes and capital gains taxes and pot laws. (WA B&O tax is almost more annoying than OR corporate income tax) Live in Vancouver, shop in Portland seems to be highly efficient jurisdictional arbitrage. It's also a win if you spend years out of the country.
    - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
      If you work in Oregon but live in Washington, you'll still pay OR income tax. Property tax in Washington is higher than Oregon, I think.
      - rdl 12y ago
        In 5 years or so I will probably have a non-profit-making business, but also personal capital gains to take regularly, so the WA/OR split is pretty ideal for that I think. Or be a US citizen resident in Europe or Asia, so having no state income tax makes a lot of sense. (A lot of datacenters are in OR specifically because of the lack of sales/use tax on servers; I used to think cheap power was the primary draw, but it actually is #2. Great fiber, supportive local governments with tax/etc. credits, etc. also contribute, but are less critical.)
ido 12y ago
Interesting, it didn't take very harsh measures for me to be left with only Pittsburgh!
jsonne 12y ago
That's really interesting. I played around with it, and interestingly it came up with the same places that I'd thought about living just from a feeling/emotional perspective. (La, Denver, Austin, Boston, SF, etc.). I don't know if you're still working on it, but if I had a suggestion could you maybe flesh out some of the more ambiguous scores? Women's rights for instance on a scale of 1-6 makes very little sense to me. Maybe something like check boxes for specific issues instead?
rwl 12y ago
What does "using" public transit mean, according to the data you're using? I notice that if you increase the minimum percentage of the population that uses public transportation to 15 percent, it eliminates basically everywhere except the major east coast cities, Chicago, and San Francisco. I wouldn't find that surprising if using public transportation means using it exclusively, but I would find it surprising (and disheartening!) if it means using it regularly, or at least some of the time.
- _delirium 12y ago
  I believe it's commute modal share, which asks people which method is their usual way of getting to work. For the U.S. as a whole, transit has 5% [1], so it wouldn't surprise me that not many cities break 15%. [1] 76% drive alone, 11% carpool, 5% take public transportation, 8% other (walk, bike, taxi, work from home). http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_12_1YR_B08124&prodType=table http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...
  - fibbery 12y ago
    Yep, it's based on the census data.

by fibbery 12y ago

avalaunch 12y ago

That is really awesome. I love it. The one thing that would make it really useful to me in the next year as my family decides where to move is the inclusion of public grade school/high school national rankings. I've been looking for some way to easily cross reference cost of living with quality of public schools.

fibbery 12y ago
Nice idea, and super important for choosing where to live.

pimlottc 12y ago

I assume you just grabbed photos off Flickr? Some of them seem pretty random. I'm from Cleveland and I have no idea where this picture is from. http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3683/9286810188_548716198e_n.jpg http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3683/9286810188_548716198e_n.j...

fibbery 12y ago
Yep, I just did searches on Flickr and grabbed ones that I liked tagged with the city, but they could be totally wrong!

lotharbot 12y ago

This is beautiful. I'm curious, did you use it to move? Are you happy with the move? Would you change certain factors or add anything? I'm also curious about how you evaluated diversity. For example, my current city and one I'm intimately familiar with (Denver) scores only a 2 on diversity, while Boston scores a 5. Ethnically, both cities' largest demographic is non-hispanic whites (Denver 52%, Boston 47% -- not tremendously different; when you add in suburbs Boston is considerably whiter than Denver). The next two groups for Denver are Hispanic or Latino (32%) and Black or African American (10%), and for Boston Black or African American (24%) and Hispanic or Latino (17%). Again, these don't seem tremendously different to me. Denver has the largest Mongolian population in the United States, hosts one of the largest Native American Pow-Wows in the country, and has had 2 Black mayors and one Hispanic mayor (Boston has never elected a non-white mayor.) I realize there are other forms of diversity, but Denver does fairly well on those too (for example, 5.8% of Denver's population is LGBT; Boston is a slightly higher 6.2%.) Point being, I don't understand what criteria were used to score these cities on opposite ends of the diversity spectrum given that they both seem fairly diverse to my eye.

bostonvaulter2 12y ago
I'm curious about the diversity score as well. Honolulu only gets a 3 out of 6! http://two88cities.herokuapp.com/cities/details/342/Hawai'i/Honolulu http://two88cities.herokuapp.com/cities/details/342/Hawai'i/...
jjoonathan 12y ago
Wild speculation: diversity could be measured via the density of "ethnic" phrases in business names. When I lived in Boston I noticed a high density of small ethnic grocery stores / eateries vs what I was used to in Denver. Within a radius of a few blocks from where I lived in Boston I had a Korean store, an Indian store, a Vietnamese restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, a Korean restaurant, and an Italian restaurant (none of which were franchised). In Denver I had a deli, a bunch of franchised fast food, and franchised ethnic food (Chipotle, Olive Garden, etc). My anecdata would score Boston as more diverse in this sense.
- lotharbot 12y ago
  I suspect your anecdata is limited to a few neighborhoods in Denver. Ever drive on south Federal? It's all Korean grocery stores and Mexican restaurants.
Fishkins 12y ago
Although the page is great overall, I was also skeptical of the diversity scores. I looked at some of the cities I've lived in, and noticed that Madison, WI and NYC both score 3. That can't be right.
- fibbery 12y ago
  Yeah, it was just my attempt at calculating it based on census data. If I were to update it I would do so using a more standardized score like gini-simpson, which I was unaware of at the time...

rdl 12y ago

Unsurprisingly, it tells me Vancouver, WA is pretty good for me. I'm still not sure where exactly in WA is best (Seattle/Bellevue/etc. would be the default choice, Vancouver is appealing, and there is some interest due to other non-tech activities in central WA), but WA seems pretty ideal overall.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
Might as well just live in Portland then, since you'd be working and shopping ere anyways. And let's not forget the exploding mountain problem. Bellingham is nice and they even have some tech there.
- rdl 12y ago
  OR has better gun laws, strip clubs, sales tax, WA has better income taxes and capital gains taxes and pot laws. (WA B&O tax is almost more annoying than OR corporate income tax) Live in Vancouver, shop in Portland seems to be highly efficient jurisdictional arbitrage. It's also a win if you spend years out of the country.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    If you work in Oregon but live in Washington, you'll still pay OR income tax. Property tax in Washington is higher than Oregon, I think.
    - rdl 12y ago
      In 5 years or so I will probably have a non-profit-making business, but also personal capital gains to take regularly, so the WA/OR split is pretty ideal for that I think. Or be a US citizen resident in Europe or Asia, so having no state income tax makes a lot of sense. (A lot of datacenters are in OR specifically because of the lack of sales/use tax on servers; I used to think cheap power was the primary draw, but it actually is #2. Great fiber, supportive local governments with tax/etc. credits, etc. also contribute, but are less critical.)

ido 12y ago

Interesting, it didn't take very harsh measures for me to be left with only Pittsburgh!

jsonne 12y ago

That's really interesting. I played around with it, and interestingly it came up with the same places that I'd thought about living just from a feeling/emotional perspective. (La, Denver, Austin, Boston, SF, etc.). I don't know if you're still working on it, but if I had a suggestion could you maybe flesh out some of the more ambiguous scores? Women's rights for instance on a scale of 1-6 makes very little sense to me. Maybe something like check boxes for specific issues instead?

rwl 12y ago

What does "using" public transit mean, according to the data you're using? I notice that if you increase the minimum percentage of the population that uses public transportation to 15 percent, it eliminates basically everywhere except the major east coast cities, Chicago, and San Francisco. I wouldn't find that surprising if using public transportation means using it exclusively, but I would find it surprising (and disheartening!) if it means using it regularly, or at least some of the time.

_delirium 12y ago
I believe it's commute modal share, which asks people which method is their usual way of getting to work. For the U.S. as a whole, transit has 5% [1], so it wouldn't surprise me that not many cities break 15%. [1] 76% drive alone, 11% carpool, 5% take public transportation, 8% other (walk, bike, taxi, work from home). http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_12_1YR_B08124&prodType=table http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...
- fibbery 12y ago
  Yep, it's based on the census data.