Exploring Philly’s Amenity Landscape

Using Yelp Fusion API and Web-scraping to create high-resolution neighborhood amenity profiles

How can you know a city?

Is it the landmarks, the places you go to rest, work, and play, or is it the characteristics of the people in each neighborhoods? As recent-ish (7 months to 5 years) Philly transplants, our team has been grappling with this question as we deepen our understanding of Philadelphia through daily life and research.

In urban planning and housing policy research, we commonly use Census, health, housing, and other administrative data when comparing and evaluating neighborhoods as living environments. This leads to rather black and white thinking: it is common in housing policy research, for example, to cast some neighborhoods as “high opportunity” and others as “low opportunity.” In more cases than not, these labels map directly onto patterns of racial and economic segregation in cities, and serve to reinforce negative stereotypes about low-income communities of color. By this logic, marginalized folks are encouraged to move into “high opportunity” neighborhoods, leaving behind the communities, spaces, and places they are comfortable and familiar with.

Proposing new neighborhood data

We propose a new lens of evaluating neighborhoods through amenities. In our work at the Housing Initiative at Penn, we are learning that rather than seeking neighborhoods with traditional markers of “opportunity” (high income, low poverty, low crime), low-income folks in Philadelphia are interested in communities with dynamic street life, restaurants, and things to do out of their homes. In short, they are interested in lively commercial areas with plenty of amenities.

Hence arose the inspiration for this project. In our work, we seek to use the most up-to-date business data available to document the amenity landscape in Philadelphia and create a profile for Philadelphia neighborhoods. We hope that this work will inform future policymakers and also help residents make residential decisions based on their preferences rather than the lofty ideal of economic and social “opportunity.”