Rachel Gordon
Assignment 5 - Basic Queries
3/21/12
Goal
Having just visited Washington DC, I am yet again struck by how many wonderful bookstore/café/bar
establishments exist in that city and how few such businesses exist here in Boston, despite the
seemingly perfect cultural fit. The goal of this analysis is, therefore, to determine where I might open
such a business myself after graduation, thereby putting my nearly-completed degrees in international
affairs and urban planning to the best possible use: selling books and drinks to over-intellectualized grad
students (and anyone else who wants to come in the door).
Necessary criteria for the site are:
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Commercially-zoned in Boston, Cambridge, or Somerville
3,000-4,000 square feet
Not less than ¼ mile of another independent bookstore (451211)
o NOTE: Bars (NAICS code 722410) were excluded because it is hypothesized that
different types of alcohol establishments do not necessarily compete with one another
even if they are nearby
Not more than ¼ mile from a MBTA subway station
Step 1 – Find commercially-zoned property in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville.
Using the MassGIS landuse2005_poly layer file, I selected by the attribute “commercial”
(“LU05_DESC”=’Commercial’) to find the relevant parcels.
Figure 1. Commercial-zoned property in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville
Step 2 – Find commercial-zoned parcels between 3,000-4,000 square feet.
Using the data layer created for Step 1, I searched for parcels with an area between 3,000 and 4,000
square feet (“AREA”>=3000 AND “AREA”<=4000). Parcels meeting these criteria are shown in blue in
Figure 3.
Figure 2. Commercial parcels
between 3,000 and 4,000
square feet
Step 3 – Find parcels meeting criteria that are also within ¼ mile of a MBTA subway station.
Blue dots below symbolize subway stops, and red dots show the location of parcels that meet the
specified size and zoning criteria. Using the MBTA_NODE and landuse2005_poly layers from MassGIS, I
selected by location to find parcels within .25 miles of MBTA nodes (i.e. subway stops).
Figure 3. 3,000-4,000ft2
commercial-zoned
properties within ¼ mile
of a subway station
Step 4 – Find parcels that are NOT within ¼ mile of another independent bookstore (NAICS code
451211)
I originally intended to eliminate sites within ¼ mile of new and used bookstores as well as independent
coffeeshops. However, the NAICS codes for the latter two categories covered quite a few more
businesses than I could sufficiently analyze for the purposes of this assignment—used bookstores are,
for example, categorized with all other stores that sell second-hand goods, which is quite a range—so I
decided to begin only with other bookstores. I believe this is the category that is most key to understand
in terms of potential competition. I searched the Reference USA database for NAICS code 451211 in
Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville. Then, utilizing the layer created previously to find spaces of 3,0004000 ft2 that are zoned for commercial use and are within ¼ mile of a subway, I selected by location to
remove parcels within ¼ mile of similar businesses. Figure 7 shoes the results, with other bookstores in
maroon and my search results in red.
Figure 4. 3,000-4,000 ft2 commercialzoned parcels within ¼ mile of a
subway and not within ¼ mile of
another independent bookstore.
Step 5 – View statistics for parcels meeting all above criteria and NOT within ¼ mile of other
independent bookstores.
Figure 5. There are 19
parcels that meet all of the
above criteria.
Step 6 – Summarize parcel use and value in Somerville
Because I live in Somerville, I would most like to operate my business here in my own town, so I am first
going to analyze the parcels available in Somerville before looking at Cambridge and Boston. It is useful
to get a sense of overall land use in town, so I summarized parcel data from the Parcels_03_2009 layer
from City\Somerville\Assessor data on the Tufts M drive, selecting parcels within ¼ mile of a subway
station. I found that there are 89 parcels zoned for commercial use within ¼ mile of a T stop, for a total
of 1,373,145 square feet of land and $202,499,500 total assessed value, as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6. Somerville parcels
summarized by zoning type, land
square footage and assessed
parcel value.
Step 7 – Field Calculator
The main customer base for a bookstore/café/bar such as I want to open is the educated population, so
I was curious how many people in Massachusetts have completed a Bachelor’s degree or higher level of
education. Using the CEN2K_BG_ED_ATTAIN_GEN_AGE data file from MassGIS Census 2000, I joined it
to the CENSUS2000_BLOCKS_POLY layer and selected for all males and females with a Bachelors,
Masters, PhD or Professional degree. As shown in Figure 7, that population in 2000 was 1,272,821
people.
Figure 7.
Massachusetts
population with a
Bachelor’s degree or
higher
Data Quality Review
As much of the land use data for my analysis is from 2005, it may well be outdated at this point. In
addition, it would be useful to include and analyze data regarding current use, ownership, value, and
vacancy of selected parcels to know whether they really are viable options for my intended business.
Finally, the actual layout and usable square footage of each space is not represented here, and those
factors would make a large difference to an actual business decision.
The census data regarding education is not particularly helpful because I was not able to successfully
select the data particular to my chosen towns (Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston). Also, the data is
from the 2000 Census, which I recognize is outdated at this point.