When I first visited New York City as a kid, one of the coolest things to me were the Duane Reades. We didn’t have them in Boston, and the first time I went in, I thought it was so exotic and strange and filled with Cool Makeup; by the time we left I was dying to visit again (I hadn’t been to Ricky’s yet). As I walked another block with my family, we passed another Duane Reade five minutes later. Then another… then another. It started to become a game – was there really a Duane Reade on every block?! As a visitor it sure felt like it, but my mother commented that New Yorkers were probably used to them the way Bostonians are accustomed to ubiquitous Dunkin Donuts. With this lab, I wanted to see if there really was a Duane Reade on every block in New York City, and if not, which neighborhood had the most?
Looking to my inspiration of Dunkin Donuts locations in Boston, I discovered (as I’d hoped) that someone had made a map of this already. People at Bostonography mapped the distance between Dunkin locations in the city and found that wherever you are in Boston, it is extremely likely that a Dunkin Donuts is less than a mile and a half away. There is no data on which areas of Boston were more densely populated with donuts, but the same folks who made this map did look at another popular “treat:” alcohol.
In a series affectionately named “Boozeton,” blogger Tim Wallace charted all of the liquor licenses in Boston, and how far it is between them, which areas have the most liquor licenses, and even how this amount relates to the population in each area.
To get point data of Duane Reades in the city, I used the ‘store locator’ feature on the official website. Unbeknownst to me then, it only gave me the hundred closest Duane Reades to my specific location – NOT all chains in the area of New York City as I had hoped. This wasn’t immediately noticeable to me until I imported my data into CartoDB, where a clear boundary was visible – not only was the border stark, but I do know definitively that there are other Duane Reade locations above 49th street. This data blunder is something I would definitely fix if I were to go forward with this project.
Initially, I merged my location data with shape files of New York City blocks, since I thought that would be the best visualization. I soon learned that not only did the location data seem to be incomplete (as mentioned), but it was also very unhelpful to look at. Sure, it’s now easy to see that there are three consecutive blocks in Koreatown that have Duane Reades, but it’s too specific to be helpful.
Data showing city blocks is so specific that there is only one instance of overlap: West 34th street between 7th and 8th Avenues has two Duane Reades. The major draw to that area is Madison Square garden, but the building itself is one whole block away, with its own Duane Reade plotted there. Since this was clearly too granular, I moved on to plotting by zip code.
Getting shapefiles of NYC zip codes took a bit of work, since the set of zip code boundaries included all zips in the United States. After paring down to just the New York and New Jersey areas, I merged my point data again and got a much more informative picture. The areas of the city that seemed to have the most of NYC’s favorite drugstore were the East Village and part of Chelsea. Before seeing these maps, I was sure that Midtown would hold the highest numbers, since that part of the city relies so heavily on immediate convenience. Of course, my data cuts off at 50th street, but nevertheless I was surprised that the zips that were further up Manhattan only had 6 Duane Reades each.
https://bhezekiah.cartodb.com/viz/1e9e4acc-38c5-11e6-bfd2-0e787de82d45/public_map
This foray into mapping is only a taste of what I might be able to see with a more complete dataset. I’m interested to truly see which neighborhoods house the most Duane Reades, not only for density’s sake, but also to see which neighborhoods might rely heavily on fewer locations. I did not look into which Duane Reades were open 24 hours, or which had 24 hour pharmacies, but those are also other factors worth noting if this project moved forward. A comparison of CVS and Rite Aid locations could also be informative, showing which areas favor which chains.
Lastly, this project made me question neighborhood boundaries and how they are decided. On my zip code chloropleth map, zip code 10011 has 8 Duane Reades, but seems to span a wide range of informal neighborhoods – It’s not quite Koreatown, not quite Chelsea, not quite Hell’s Kitchen. What is this area actually called, and who is the authority on the name? Is it residents, or the city?
Of course, Bostonography has a geospatial graphic illustrating a similar question in the Boston area: How do residents determine which suburb is which? Using crowdsourced data, maps were created of major Boston area neighborhoods and their projected boundaries. Following a random hexagonal layout, users voted on where they thought each neighborhood began and ended. The interesting part is the overlap – patterns of consensus are mapped in color, with the darker blue representing the most agreed upon area and the lighter green showing the area of hazier agreement.
This mapping project started in 2012 and seems to still be ongoing, although more solid data was collected as of 2013. I like the idea of using crowdsourced neighborhood boundaries better than zip codes because it is much more intimate and community based. If the most notable facts gleaned from geospatial data are related to neighborhoods, wouldn’t it be more interesting to see how people view the area they live in alongside with which drugstore chain they are loyal to?