Hidalgo and Castaner, of MIT’s Media Lab, have developed a complex, but useful model to determine optimal distribution of neighborhood amenities, such as coffee shops and parking lots. It is available free at the web address noted below. As the researchers report, “Neighborhoods populated by amenities, such as restaurants, cafes and libraries, are considered to be a key property of desirable cities. Yet, despite the global enthusiasm for amenity-rich neighborhoods, little is known about the empirical laws governing the colocation of amenities at the neighborhood scale…[we] use the Amenity Space [data set developed] to build a recommender system that identifies the amenities that are missing in a neighborhood given its current pattern of specialization.”
Cesar Hidalgo and Elisa Castaner. 2015. “Do We Need Another Coffee House? The Amenity Space and the Evolution of Neighborhoods.” Physics and Society section, Cornell University Library http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.02868?utm_source=Complexity+Digest&utm_campaign=d86d35776e-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f55ea67de1-d86d35776e-67211033
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.