[Sigia-l] info on neighborhoods in u.s. cities

Wed May 16 13:24:32 EDT 2007

Susan,

Thanks for the thoughtful response. It's my understanding (subject to
correction, of course) that zip codes are tied to population density,
and this is one reason that a variety of options is desirable. A town
with a small population may indeed have many neighborhoods for a
single zipcode, making the latter a much less useful tool for locating
addresses that are nearby. And in a densely populated area, such as
Manhattan, where you have a high diversity of communities distributed
in a small area, neighborhood names are much more useful and commonly
used than zipcodes, and even intersections. So it is a tricky
situation. I'm hoping to find a standard mapping of neighborhoods to
zipcodes as a way to start.  Thanks for your input.

Best,
Frank

On 5/16/07, Susan Doran <susandoran at hotmail.com> wrote:
> hi Frank,
>
> Interesting post and challenge!
>
> You may well have already thought of this, and
> it might not be helpful/relevant to what you're
> doing, but the relationship of neighborhoods to
> zip codes strikes me as being tricky.
>
> In NYC, for example, you might have several
> zipcodes associated with one neighborhood
> (e.g., Chelsea), but in the much smaller Portland,
> Maine, for example (pop: 70,000), where
> neighborhoods are equally perceived by locals to
> be important designations--zip code may be too
> blunt an instrument. Meaning, 1 zip code may
> cover multiple (and highly disparate) neighborhoods.
>
> I'm thinking there has to be some way, though,
> that maybe realtors divide up neighborhoods using
> another tool/mechanism/algorithm some than zip
> code. Or maybe not.
>
> I recall a realtor offering to define for me--for an
> automated search/email--the neighborhoods I
> was interested in, here in Portland, Maine, herself,
> by hand, going street by street and creating a
> query based on selected streets or parts of streets.
> I told her not to bother. Consequently, the search
> results sucked. The "hits" would include properties in
> neighborhoods I would never dream of living in
> (but all in the same zip code as desirable properties).
>
> Sorry not to be more helpful. I will think about this.
> You'd think there'd be some way at least to sort of
> "draw" on a map, thereby defining neighborhoods
> or areas...and the underlying rules/algorithms would
> be autogenerated...and if that were possible you
> could include multiple areas within the definition
> of a neighborhood, which would be ideal anyway,
> since neighborhoods are so much more subjective
> than, as you say, towns, or boroughs.
>
> - Susan
>
>
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Susan Doran
> 55 Morning Street - Apt 4/1
> Portland ME  04101
> 207-774-4963 (land)
> 202-296-4849 (cell)
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
>
>
> ----Original Message Follows----
> From: "Frank Shepard" <fgshepard at gmail.com>
> To: "Russell E. Unger" <russ at userglue.com>, Sigia-l at asis.org
> Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] info on neighborhoods in u.s. cities
> Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 11:47:51 -0400
>
> Russell,
>
> Thanks for your response. I'm glad to see that it's been done. My
> primary question at this point is how one associates a given
> neighborhood with a zip code (or whatever other coordinate one uses as
> the base). Is this information -- the mapping of neighborhoods to
> zipcodes -- readily available? Do you remember where you obtained it?
>
> Thanks again!
> Frank
>
> On 5/16/07, Russell E. Unger <russ at userglue.com> wrote:
>  > Dealt with something similar as this--we took a zip code (or zip codes,
>  > really) and associated those to the neighborhoods.
>  >
>  > Based upon a zip code selection, a user could then do a deeper dive for
>  > neighborhoods.  This worked well for large metropolitan areas (also
>  > allowed us to do things like "west suburbs" vs "south suburbs") but also
>  > allowed us to ignore smaller towns / communities where it did not apply.
>  >
>  > We had some debate around how to handle "Burroughs" and I do not recall
>  > the outcome.
>  >
>  > The other tricky issue was how to handle the transaction that would check
>  > for a zip that had neighborhoods associated with it.
>  >
>  > HTH,
>  >
>  > Russ
>  >
>  > On Wed, May 16, 2007 10:18 am, Frank Shepard wrote:
>  > > Hello,
>  > >
>  > > A client wants to expand the local search functionality of their site
>  > > by allowing users to expand the radius that defines the result set.
>  > > They currently do this in terms of distances (miles) but would like
>  > > the list of options to include a list of "surrounding neighborhoods."
>  > > (Yelp.com offers this functionality on their site.) This would require
>  > > a list of neighborhood names in U.S. cities (which I have located) as
>  > > well as some way to determine their proximity to a given point (maybe
>  > > a zipcode). Does anyone know if this information is widely available,
>  > > either free (e.g., from the post-office) or otherwise? Is there a
>  > > standardized government list associated with zip-codes?  Does anyone
>  > > have any suggestions? Your assistance is much appreciated.
>  > >
>  > > Best regards,
>  > > Frank Shepard
>  > > ------------
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