Company
Date Published
July 30, 2024
Author
CARTO Contributors
Word count
827
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

The text explores how location data can be used to identify and understand communities beyond traditional geographic boundaries, using Williamsburg, NY as a case study. The neighborhood's history of diverse immigrant communities, cultural tensions, and gentrification are considered in the context of modern urban mobility and spatial planning. A clustering algorithm called DBSCAN is applied to location data from taxi rides to group similar characteristics, such as pick-up and drop-off locations, day of the week, time of day, and trip distance. The resulting map reveals 75 communities, including "partiers", "intra-borough residents", "working class" residents, "visitors with expensive taste", and "Orthodox Jewish" residents, each with distinct patterns and behaviors.