Final Project

Discussion

Throughout the project I ran into numerous problems (including TerrSet telling me there was a catastrophic failure) but, the analysis was completed. There are limitations to this analysis as there were a few data sets that I wanted to use (road networks and age-population density) that would not align with any of my data in TerrSet no matter what I did. I tried for four days to get this to work and could not, so I decided to take the loss and complete the analysis without these files. I am still unsure of why I had this problem, but I can assure you that I tried my best to fix it (ask the other students in the lab who saw me struggling and also could not help). Since I was working with a small (relatively) city, the amount of data that the municipal government has published for the area is not abundant. If I was not very intrigued on where I should start convincing people to build a brewery that I can go visit on the weekends close to my home, I would have picked another city that had more data sets to improve the analysis.

The only other major limitation I found was that I wanted to do a cost analysis to determine the cost it would be from residential areas (would help determine cab fare better) to suitable areas, but I could not do this due to my issues with the road networks.

As well, I wish that I could have obtained data for projections of future residential areas or where the increasing populations will be living. As the city population is increasing, it would be interesting to see where the majority of people are going to reside – will more development occur on the eastern side of the city? will there be more apartments on the west side of the city? This would allow me to create weights with the neighbourhoods depending on future population projections and decide on what areas are going to be most in need of a cool, new social setting as that area experiences urban growth. The future projections would be useful as obtaining the permits and applications can take a very long time (a few years), then building and brewing adds even more time. This means that the areas that are the most suitable now, may not be the most suitable in a few years when the business is set to open up.

Otherwise, my analysis provided better results than I had hoped for. I now want to find investors and start pushing this idea to create a more social city. I know that these locations could still be narrowed down using economic or social value factors, but it is at least a start that shows areas that are suitable geographically.