iskandery

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 It's a bit outdated now but I wrote up an explanation a while back that gives the general idea behind the scoring algorithm: https://findmyarea.co.uk/blog/how-findmyarea-works/

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.

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

Would be great to see similar tools for other cities!

That's a nice idea re using an existing place as a starting point. I think some users won't have a clear idea as to exactly what they want so making it easier to "browse" could be helpful.

For the most part extending to the whole country shouldn't be too difficult (famous last words!) -- most of the data sources I'm currently using aren't specific to London. But I think I'll probably first go deep rather than wide, allowing the user to look at areas at a more granular level should they wish to.

Politics is on the todo list as well!

FindMyArea is a small web app that helps property renters/buyers find the perfect area to live in based on their criteria.

It only handles London for now, but soon it’ll be the rest of the UK and then other cities/countries (data permitting!).

You pop in the stuff you care about (budget, commute destinations, local amenities etc) and then with a bit of simple maths, the tool will give you a list of areas (e.g. Shoreditch or Richmond) that satisfy your requirements.

More details on how the scoring engine works here: https://findmyarea.co.uk/blog/how-findmyarea-works/

Eventually I’d like to turn FindMyArea into a tool where you can find the right area for anything.

Not just finding areas to live in, but also areas that are ripe for investment or relocating to if you’re 100% remote (or for the perfect holiday, if that’s more your thing).

Currently I’m not sure if there’s an easy way of doing this besides using GIS software/something like Tableau, which is obviously pretty inaccessible to the average user.

Anyway, that’s just a distant goal for now. Let me know what you think of this first version! (btw the design isn’t great -- I’m a data scientist, not a web developer...)