Notes regarding this project:
- Affordability measurement shows the affordability of a city based on the “median multiple”. This is a number, usually from 2-5, that indicates how many times more expensive the median house price is than the median household income. This measurement is better for comparing cities because the affordability of the city will be relative to the amount of money that people make in that city. A house that may be considered unaffordable in one city may be affordable in another city because the median household income is higher.
- The housing affordability ratings, determined by the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey, are “Affordable” (3.0 & under), “Moderately Unaffordable” (3.1-4.0), “Seriously Unaffordable” (4.1-5.0) and Severely Unaffordable (5.1 & over).
- In conclusion, affordability is not a good indicator of a city’s livability. A city’s livability is largely determined by factors that are independent of a person’s wealth. Livability has more relation to the city’s layout, including parks, greenery, bike paths, accessibility, and mobility. Vancouver is an extremely livable city but not an affordable city.
Accomplishment Statements
- Practiced using the Canadian Census Data
- Learned different ways to display the same data: natural breaks, equal interval, standard deviation, manual breaks
- Practiced producing an effective map