Analyzing metropolis avenue maps utilizing Python plots and community metrics

I may go on for hours in an try to influence a bunch of individuals why my metropolis (New York) is the very best metropolis on this planet. Nevertheless, I’ve just lately realized that our notion of cities varies in response to our personal inner analysis standards. Cities might be evaluated throughout a large number of sides, together with climate, meals scene, nightlife, points of interest, walkability, bike-ability, high quality of public transit, sports activities groups, entry to nature, and many others.

In a latest dialogue with some colleagues and mates, some expressed that ease of transportation ought to be extra closely weighted than climate, whereas others countered that they may get previous a bitter wind chill so long as there have been loads of issues to do. Rating or tiering cities is a extremely subjective train, partially as a result of ambiguity of the components that ought to be thought of, but in addition as a result of cities might be evaluated from completely different contexts: to reside in, to go to for a weekend, or to go to for per week. Personally, having lived in 4 cities in my life, I’ve discovered that even my very own rating of cities modifications barely as my priorities fluctuate. For instance, I rank Boston extra extremely as a spot to reside than to go to, whereas I rank Miami extra extremely as a spot to go to than to reside.

One main shortcoming that comes up as a part of the controversy is methods to rank cities you’ve by no means been to earlier than. This explicit blocker motivated me to higher perceive cities from the angle of studying how they’re laid out on a map. All prime tier cities that I’ve come throughout have a physique of water (e.g. river, ocean, lake) in shut proximity to town heart, so I wished to confirm if it is a widespread characteristic of all metropolitan cities. As for whether or not the downtown a part of a metropolis is usually configured in a sq. grid or randomly organized, this query led me to leverage the Open Road Map API programmatically.

On this technical walkthrough, I’ll primarily current my findings of this exploration but in addition briefly clarify how I applied the Python code.

Step 1: Geocoding