But did you know that maps can be funny? Hilarious, sarcastic, smart-asslike - you name it. Take off your business hat and put on your laughing suit. The data doesn't need to be exact. Generalizations must be made. Errors will occur. But who cares? As long as it's funny, you win.
Take my first project:
Hipster Density in Minneapolis.
There has been alot of talk between my colleagues over the exact definition of a hipster. Urban dictionary and Wikipedia take some good stabs at a definition. The main points are young, male or female, generally white, living in densely populated areas and slight to heavy counterculture elements. Tight clothing and awesome facial hair permeate hipster society. Indie Rock playing in a dilapidated bar with cheap drinks, located in an up-and-coming neighborhood is a hipsters dream. Bicycles, usually single speed, are a hipsters primary mode of transportation. Helmets are frowned upon. (For pictorial representations of hipsters, there is only one site that does enough justice).
So how does one find hipster density in Minneapolis? Here is how I am going to go about it.
I will assign currently undetermined values for each of the criteria below. My data will be broken up by census block.
- -Hipsters are predominately young. I focus on areas that have high 18-25 year old density.
- -Most hipsters are white. It will be hard to isolate for this attribute. Hipsters are known to migrate to the up-and-coming neighborhoods, so isolating for race by location could be misleading. The way to adjust for this factor is find areas where 18-25 year old white males and females overindex. For example, if there is a 20% white 18-25 year old population following by a 5% 35-55 year old white population, this would suggest a hipster dominated region. We would need to adjust for median age to make sure this census block doesn't skew young for all races (like a college town).
- -Hipsters need to be within biking distance of bars and restaurants. I will define biking distance as <5>
- Hipster income level is below the U.S. median. Most work as bike delivery men/women (sweeping generalization). I will define median income as $15,000-$20,000/yr
I will work on developing a rating system that defines the "Hipster value" of each attribute. Once that is complete, census data will be downloaded and each block area will receive its very own "Hipster index rating". This will make a nice chloropeth map showing hipster density in Minneapolis.
