Relocation Options for the Smith Family
INTRODUCTION
The Smith family will be relocating from the East Coast to the Los Angeles area for Mr. Smith’s new job at the Los Angeles Times. As with any relocation, they will have certain parameters that must be met in order to make their transition as comfortable as possible. First and foremost, the Smith’s have a daughter, Cindy, who has a severe medical condition, which requires them to be within 15 minutes of a hospital to assure the best chances of survival. In addition to this crucial requirement, the Smith’s are somewhat limited as they have Kaiser Health Insurance, which requires them to seek treatment at a Kaiser hospital. The two above-mentioned requirements are of the utmost importance. Another important consideration is that Cindy will be entering the sixth grade and would need a middle school close to home and again, within 15 minutes of a Kaiser hospital. An additional parameter is the budget for the home that they will be buying, which is $450,000 - $550,000. Finally, Mr. Smith will be working in downtown Los Angeles at 202 West 1st Street and he would like to have a commute time of 30 minutes or less. Generally, meeting all of these expectations would seem to be a daunting task, taking into consideration the requirements that must be met as well as the desires requested. With GIS, this seemingly difficult assessment can be laid out in an easy to understand map.
Take into account the needs and desires of the Smith family:
1. Home must be within 15 minutes of a Kaiser hospital.
2. Middle school must be within 15 minutes of a Kaiser hospital.
3. Home should be within reasonable distance of middle school.
4. Home prices in neighborhood should be within budget of $450k - $550k.
5. Commute time to Los Angeles Times should not exceed 30 minutes.
METHODS
We must first determine how time is a factor when driving in Los Angeles. As anyone who has driven in Los Angeles knows, it always takes longer than you expect to get around. When constructing buffers around selected features, I opted to grant 3 minutes per mile for the purpose of this analysis. Keep in mind that buffers are distances “as the crow flies”, therefore one mile “as the crow flies”, may in fact be two or three miles in a car.
The most important features in this particular relocation map are the Kaiser hospitals, which are vital to Cindy’s health. After adding the landmark shapefile from Tiger, I selected for hospitals. Within the hospital attribute table I selected the Kaiser hospitals and created a new data layer. As you can see, there are five Kaiser hospitals in the area around downtown Los Angeles. I created both a three-mile buffer and a five-mile buffer around these hospitals. Depending upon the Smith’s comfort level, they could choose to live closer or slightly farther from the hospital, but still likely within the required 15-minute drive to the hospital.
Using geocoding, I determined the location of Mr. Smith’s work at the Los Angeles Times. I then applied a 10-mile buffer to that location, which should comfortably get him to and from work within the 30 minutes he had hoped for. I added a neighborhood shapefile as a data layer that I acquired through Zillow. Many neighborhoods were included, but some areas did not include isolated neighborhood names (such as Burbank and Alameda). With the use of a website (schoolsK-12.com) that listed schools along with median home prices, I was able to construct an excel sheet that enable me to create a data layer with middle schools that were in neighborhoods that were within the Smith’s house budget.
To better orient the map user, I included major roads and freeways. In Los Angeles freeways are our best method for understanding where we are in this sprawling city. In addition, an extent rectangle was included to better orient the map user. By incorporating the hospitals, schools, neighborhoods, buffers, roads and Mr. Smith’s new office to the Relocation Options for the Smith Family map, an otherwise difficult puzzle was made simple with the use of GIS.
RESULTS
Of the five Kaiser hospitals indicated on the map, three of them fall within the 10-mile buffer established around Mr. Smith’s new job at the Los Angeles Times. An additional one falls outside the buffer, yet a portion of the 3-mile and 5-mile buffers around the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center do fall within the work buffer. There were only nine schools in neighborhoods with median home prices between $450k-$550K, that fell within the 10-mile work zone AND within the 3 and 5-mile hospital buffer zones. There were two additional schools (East Central) that were outside the work buffer, but within the 3-mile hospital buffer for the Kaiser Foundation hospital, thus still an option.
Upon looking at this map, it is apparent that all of the neighborhoods that meet the Smith's requirements are to the north or the west of the Los Angeles Times office. I would suggest to the Smith’s that they focus their house hunting in the Mid City neighborhood. Not only is it the largest neighborhood, but there are two middle schools, one within the 3-mile hospital buffer, and the other just outside of it. As a matter of fact, both schools are within the 5-mile hospital buffer for two hospitals. The neighborhood has homes with median home prices that are within their budget. In addition, Mr. Smith will have a commute well within his desired 30 minutes or less.
CONCLUSION/DISCUSSION
If we reflect back upon the parameters of the Smith family relocation we can see that we were able to find neighborhoods that met the needs and desires they hoped to achieve using GIS.
1. Neighborhood within 15 minutes of a Kaiser Hospital.
2. Middle school within 15 minutes of a Kaiser Hospital.
3. Neighborhood within reasonable distance of middle school.
4. Home prices in neighborhood within budget of $450k - $550k.
5. Commute time to Los Angeles Times not exceeding 30 minutes.
The Relocation Options for the Smith Family map makes it much easier for the Smith Family to select a neighborhood and middle school for their daughter Cindy that meets her special needs. Even if the Smith’s are unfamiliar with the Los Angeles area, they can refer to the map when they make their decision as to where to purchase a home that falls within their budget.
The limitations of this particular map is, that the median house price may not be the best method to determine what the range of prices in a given neighborhood are. It would be very possible to find a home within the Smith’s budget in another neighborhood that indeed is within the hospital buffer and has a middle school nearby. However, it would be virtually impossible to include every home price in such a vast area for this particular analysis.
