Vancouver is well-know for a city that is well integrated with nature.  This city is right next to a beautiful shoreline (protected by Vancouver Island), and is only an hour drive to the local mountains and glaciers.  With all its sheer beauty and greenery, there is a cost.  Vancouver is also infamous for its rising house prices.  As of 2017, our lovely city ranked the 6th most expensive real estate market.

Learning about different break methods, I have been able to learn to categorize shelter cost values differently Below are a few maps showing different pricing classifications for Metro Vancouver (housing price being shelter cost):

The maps are separated in 4 classifications based on data from 2016.  Data was retrieved under “‘Census Canada 2016 boundary files” from the Abacus Dataverse Network. The values are in dollars Canadian.

The natural breaks classification (Jenks optimization method) is done by the ArcGIS program.  The Equal Interval classification is classified by the range of the data, then it is divided into a number of classifications each having equal difference.  The Manual Break classification is classified by personal preference of each class.  The standard deviation Classification uses the standard deviation of the mean, the mean being average house cost.

Below is a comparison of 2016 and 2011 housing cost in Vancouver.  Notice the difference in color dynamics within a 5 year frame:

Data retrieved under “Census Canada 2011 boundary files” and “Census Canada 2016 boundary files” from the Abacus Dataverse Network.  Manual breaks were used; the max numerical value of 2016 was well-over 3,000,000.00 (hihgest value from the data set was 3,601,500.00).