Clever relocation hacks
How on earth did people manage to move to new cities before the
internet? Somehow, of course, they did. But, as is the case with a lot
of other things that are much easier with access to e-mail
and the web, it’s hard to imagine. At any rate, one of the perks of moving to a big city is the ready
availability of information on that city. I’ve been browsing PhillyBlog a lot; it’s more a forum than a blog, really, and there are tons of threads about moving, transportation, and life in various neighborhoods. Philadelphia also has a Craigslist, which means more apartment listings than you
can shake a stick at, plus you can search them by price and keyword and get your
search delivered to you as an RSS feed. (This is, hands down, my
current favorite housing search tool. Though I wish pictures showed up
in the feed.)
HousingMaps, which is basically Craigslist + Google Maps, lets
you take the Craigslist apartment listings, narrow them down by price,
and display them on a map. The drawback is that if
the address is entered in a weird format (like "20XX Spruce St."),
Google Maps isn’t smart enough to figure out that it should mark the
20th and Spruce intersection rather than 20 Spruce Street, which is all
the way on the other side of Center City. Still, the visualization is a great idea, because most of us think in terms of location when we think about looking for a new place to live.
Philadelphia is also one of the cities chosen for A9 Maps, a
really nifty integration of a mapping application with block-by-block,
street-level photography. It only covers Center City and a tiny bit of West Philly, but for many of
the Center City addresses I’m looking at, it’s the next best thing to
walking around and getting a feel for the neighborhood. You can tell if
the building you’re looking at is well-kept-up or dilapidated, what the
architecture of the neighborhood looks like, if there are boarded-up
houses or vacant lots nearby, or where the green spaces are. I used it to check whether you can actually
walk across the bridge over the Schuylkill at Spring Garden Street. Also good for checking out potential neighborhoods: the Philadelphia NIS CrimeBase, which lets you map data from the Philadelphia police department in varying levels of detail, down to individual census blocks.
And then there’s Google Earth, which I’ve had installed on my
office computer since I started my current job. The quality of Google
Earth’s aerial photography varies depending on where you’re looking,
but for Philadelphia it’s very good. Neat things about Google Earth:
you can "bookmark" a location with a little pushpin icon and turn on
and off a lot of layers of data. I’ve been trying out the "Grocery
Stores" layer to see where I can get groceries in the neighborhoods I’m
looking at. Other useful information: street names, zip codes, parks,
restaurants, and banks.
How much do I love mapping applications? A whole lot, that’s how much.
I love reading about your adventure, i.e. a move to Philadelphia. Are you Italian? Then you should move to South Philly. If not, how about Rhawnhurst, but it’s a long commute to downtown. Are you rich? Buy a place on South St. or on Delancy near 17th. Speaking of Delancy, if you are Presbyterian, check out Tenth Presbyterian Church. Great music and traditionally good preaching.