Are You a Local Expert? Are You Knowledgeable About Neighborhood Boundaries in your Area?
By: Drew Meyers, Zillow Business Development Specialist | June 1, 2009
If the answer to both questions is “yes”, and you are willing to help by giving us feedback, we’d love to hear from you. We’re doing some improvements on the neighborhood boundaries that we released in January of 2008.
For example, in Philadelphia (where Diane and I just attended the RE BarCamp), we have two sets of maps to go from — one from the Philadelphia Neighborhood Information System site, and the other is from the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Both seem to be fairly official sources, but the maps are quite different; the City Planning Commission’s map breaks an area into smaller neighborhoods than those described in the PNIS map. Here are the Philadelphia files (each broken down into North and South to be more legible):
For those in the Philadelphia area, which one is more accurate? Are there any neighborhoods on the maps that just don’t exist in real life? Are there some with the wrong boundary lines?
Philadelphia is just one of the cities we are working on. We’re looking for any feedback we can get, whether we currently have neighborhood boundaries in your city or not. If we don’t currently have neighborhoods in your city, we’d love to add them if we find a good source for that data.
Once we’ve made our improvements and pushed them to the live site, we’ll also update the shapefiles available for anyone to use via a creative commons license, which a few companies such as Walk Score, Zilpy, TeachStreet, and Curbed have already integrated into their sites.
Can you help provide feedback about boundaries in your area? If you provide quality feedback — like a map or specific feedback on what’s right or wrong and why (not just a rant) — we will award you a Local Expert Badge. To give feedback, just leave a comment on this post and we’ll reach out to you offline for feedback. Thanks!
- Stumble it!
- Categories: Partner Relations, Zillow
Comments
18 Comments so far
Enjoy this post? Subscribe to the Zillow Blog feed or get updates via e-mail
Leavenworth Real Estate | Geordie Romer on June 1, 2009 5:07 pm
I wondered what I had to do to get a local expert badge!
In the 98826 Zipcode we have a number of distinct areas which are labeled on the maps you use - these “neighborhoods” (the term is used loosely in the rural areas) include Plain - an unincorporated town, Lake Wenatchee and Fish Lake. All show on your map and are labeled, but the user ends up in strange places if you try and search for them.
You did change the county to Chelan County recently - I think that was a big help.
Matt on June 1, 2009 5:25 pm
If you’re looking for San Diego neighborhoods, I can help you out.
D. Patrick Lewis on June 1, 2009 6:27 pm
I can help in the Phoenix Metro area.
San Diego Home Inspector | Darin Redding on June 1, 2009 6:36 pm
Another San Diegan can help if required.
joe spake on June 1, 2009 6:44 pm
Memphis, TN metro area, with concentration on neighborhoods inside Memphis city limits.
Jason Sandquist on June 1, 2009 8:39 pm
you can chalk me up for the Minneapolis/St. Paul area
zillow.com Looking for Data Updates | propertyadguru.com on June 1, 2009 8:52 pm
[...] zillow.com is looking for locals to help update their data on neighbourhood boundaries. A recent post on the zillow.com blog calls for contributions to the data that may be more accurate than what is [...]
Gene Agnew on June 1, 2009 11:02 pm
Thought the PNIS map was pretty accurate until I looked at the PCPC maps. I’ll put it his way, if you were born and raised in Philly you would be able to fill in 75% of the neighborhoods from the PNIS map. The second map is almost to detailed. Unless you grew up in Morrel Park calling the general area Academy Gardens serves the purpose. i.e. same demographics, types of homes. I believe that holds true for most of the communities. So PNIS map gets my vote as accurate enough.
Peggy Grace on June 2, 2009 5:10 am
Lafayette, Louisiana is a unique area of the country right now in that our unemployment rate is a low 4.8%, our economy is not faltering and we are listed in Forbes as third in the nation for the fasting growing mid sized city. I can be your expert for this area. Please contact me.
Pete Deatherage on June 2, 2009 6:27 am
I’m a real estate appraiser. I have lots of local knowledge, especially Rohnert Park, CA, Petaluma, CA, Santa Rosa, Ca, Bodega Bay, Ca. Most of Sonoma and Marin Counties Ca.
I’d be interested in helping out
Kathy Lewis on June 2, 2009 5:31 pm
I’ve been in real estate for 17 years in Boston and the western suburbs of Wellesley, Weston, Newton and Needham….seen the ups and downs…right now it is steady and properties are still selling, but the interest rates might be going up now so I am conceerned that will rattle our market Kathy Lewis
Claude Schrader on June 2, 2009 5:48 pm
For Philly, in addition to the tools you already mentioned, the Cartographic Modeling Lab at Penn (http://cml.upenn.edu/nbase) has a wealth of info, though it takes a few minutes to figure out how to work their tools.
Good luck, though keep in mind that there is lots of local disagreement about neighborhoods too. The “portfishington” area between fishtown, kensington, and port richmond has very hazy boundaries. phillyblog.com is a source of endless debate about this topic. I know philly really well, so feel free to email me with more questions.
Claude Schrader on June 2, 2009 6:03 pm
giving it more thought, Though both maps are technically correct, I agree that the PNIS map is accurate enough. Looking at Germantown and Mt Airy, I’ve heard of all the PCPC areas such as pomona-cherokee, duval, penn-knox, west central, and the like in reference to neighborhood groups and super-local things like zoning issues. If you ask anyone where they’re from, however, they will say the PNIS map boundary
Drew Meyers on June 9, 2009 8:06 am
Thanks for the comments everyone. We’ll reach out to people offline.
Dan Knauss on June 9, 2009 11:02 am
On Milwaukee’s northeast side, you are missing some neighborhood information that can be found in data sets and official City of Milwaukee maps in the links at the bottom of this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhoods_of_Milwaukee
Eg.: Schlitz Park and the Haymarket, which are not heavy-residential but a lot of new development is in progress or likely to come.
And for real estate purposes, the south end of Riverwest is generally called “The Beerline” and is essentially a separate neighborhood of condos around some restaurants and a microbrewery. I chronicled this change and the various perceptions around it several years ago: http://www.riverwestcurrents.org/2003/January/000369.html
There are also some very newly articulated business and residential districts on the East Side, which has more neighborhood associations than official neighborhoods. Neighborhood association boundaries are probably the basic, most populist authority on neighborhood boundaries, assuming they cohere and last for a reasonable amount of time. Most seem to come into existence in this part of the city as a means of creating and asserting a kind of para-political authority.
Marc Diaz on June 16, 2009 8:24 pm
I’d love to be of service in the Memphis metro area.
Peter on August 11, 2009 8:50 am
Is Zilpy still in business? The contact us link doesn’t work and the data hasn’t been updated in months.
Paul Robie on August 11, 2009 3:46 pm
For Baltimore, MD, a very unscientific sampling shows that properties in the neighborhood of “Homeland” have been incorrectly assigned to “Chinquapin Park/Belvedere.” Based on the list of neighborhoods for Baltimore, the 957 properties in Homeland should be assigned to the “Roland Park/Homeland/Guilford” category. Please contact me and I’ll be happy to help identify the properties in Homeland. Thanks.