Lab 2: Geocoding - Storage Location Reflects Regional Social Status

       As a college student, I realize that there is the tendency of having to move constantly due to the limitation of dormitory vacancies. In order to facilitate moving, many students would resort to renting public storage spaces during the transition period of moving from the dorms to their new apartments. Since I have personally experienced renting storage spaces, I went through the process of researching for cheap and close-by storage places and have become curious about how these storages are distributed around a city as large as Los angeles in relation to the needs of differently social classes in respective city areas. 

Map Showing Average Listing Price for Los Angeles

       Using the address locator in geocoding and a base map which i downloaded from Tiger/Line, i have created a map showing the distribution of storage places in Los Angeles. In addition, according to this map showing the average listing price of homes in Los Angeles found on Trulia.com, which reflects the social class of different regions of the city; there seems to be a strong correlation between storage locations and social class. The red regions seen on the Trulia map represent areas of high value properties, whereas the green regions represent the opposite (low value properties). Referring back to my storage location map, there are less than 10 storages altogether located in the Santa Monica, Belair, and Beverly Hills regions where they fall into the high value property category, while there is a significantly large number of storages in Downtown which falls in the low value property region. This phenomenon is due to the fact that people who live in the area of relatively low value properties have less economic stability which increases the possibility of having to move away and would need storage spaces to aid moving. Also, since lower income housing has limited space for its owner to store their belonging, people would store items at a storage space. Another reason for this phenomenon is that there is a large amount of offices in the business district of downtown, and these offices might require the use of storage space to store away their files and documents. 

      I enjoyed using geocoding in this lab because it allowed me to analyze spatial contents in terms of their  relationship with the area they are in. In other words, it is reminiscent of looking at an area in the bird's eyes view, and being able to oversee different objects while understanding their relationship with each other.

Works Cited

"Los Angeles Home Prices and Heat Map - Trulia.com." Trulia - Real Estate, Homes for Sale, Sold Properties, Apartments for Rent. Web. 14 Aug. 2011. <http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/California/Los_Angeles-heat_map/>.