London's Neighbourhoods Redrawn

James Drury
By James Drury Last edited 113 months ago
London's Neighbourhoods Redrawn

The Whereabouts map redraws city boundaries by the type of people that live in areas, rather than on geographical lines.

London's boundaries have been redrawn by a group of data experts, who have assembled populations not along physical lines, but by grouping similar types of people together.

The Whereabouts map uses 235 open datasets including adult qualification level, proximity to green space, general health and even Flickr photo counts, to create eight new 'neighbourhoods'.

Although it's possible to drill down right to street level, what the map generally shows is that most company directors live in west London (no surprise there); the older you are, the further out of the city centre you are likely to live; that the most widely-distributed group is those living in affordable housing; and that most young people live and work near central London.

The map was created by London's Future Cities Catapult — an organisation which aims to bring together academics, policy-makers, financiers and others in order to come up with technology and innovations for the capital.

The body reckons: "Reimagining neighbourhoods in this way could help local authorities to commission shared services more effectively. It could help a transport provider to tailor a service more efficiently, make behaviour change campaigns scalable to new areas of a city or reduce start-up costs for innovative new businesses, to name just a few applications."

Last Updated 25 October 2014