Welcome to my final project blog. This project was carried out as part of GEOB 370 Advanced Geographic Information Science course offered in the UBC Department of Geography.

[In this project, I am the only person involved. There are no team members.]

In my project, I have identified and examined the correlation between real estate housing prices and crime as well as the correlation between housing rental prices and transit in the city of Vancouver. After viewing Andrew Yan’s maps depicting different housing prices and the contrast in various Vancouver neighborhoods (Yan, 2016),  I was interested to see if there was more or less crime occurring in the wealthier and more expensive areas of Vancouver in comparison to the more affordable and less expensive ones. In other words, I wanted to examine if crime affected real estate prices in the different dissemination areas of various Vancouver neighborhoods. Furthermore, I was curious to examine how the factors of transit availability and proximity to transit correlated to prices of average dwelling rentals in the various census tracts around Vancouver. Moreover, does proximity to transit, such as bus stops and Sky Train or Canada Line stations, have any correlation to different prices of rental dwelling units?  In all, this project aimed to discover if crime had an impact on real estate sale prices and dwelling rental prices, as well as whether the prices of average dwelling rentals was correlated to transit.

I chose to use the variables of crime and housing price value in real estate together because I believe that there is a more realistic relationship between these variables than transit would have with home dwelling value or than crime would have with rental prices. I assumed that crime would have an impact on people looking to buy a home in a neighborhood and therefore crime would affect the value of the homes within various parts of the city. Likewise, I chose to examine the relationship between the variables of transit and rental prices because I assumed that the majority of renters would want to find a place that is near  rapid transit with good connectivity. I assumed that transit would have more of a correlation to rental prices than crime would have, and I also assumed that transit proximity and availability of transit would be more closely related to decisions involving home-renters rather than home-buyers.

The goal for my project was to develop multiple models of maps conveying how crime impacts housing prices and how transit correlates to the rental prices in the Vancouver region. My model was successful in analyzing these relationships, as it identified that crime has impacted housing prices in Vancouver around the various neighborhoods, and also illustrated that transit was correlated to the different rental prices in the city.