How to Degentrify Your Neighborhood

Back in 2015 Sam Floy invented an algorithm which could work out which neighborhoods were becoming gentrified and which were becoming more salubrious. His basic formula simply looked at the ratio of coffee shops to fried chicken restaurants to determine the desirability of a neighborhood. The Guardian has now refined Sam's algorithm to help identify neighborhoods which are undergoing de-gentrification.

In How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops Floy compared heat maps of coffee & fried chicken shops to identify the areas with more coffee shops. The areas with more coffee shops are the areas that Floy believes are more salubrious. He then overlaid these areas on a property value heat map in order to identify which of these areas are in parts of London where it is relatively cheaper to buy property.

The Guardian has discovered that you can cancel out the coffee shop number in the gentrification equation. In fact all you really need to know in order to determine the desirability of a neighborhood is the number of fast food restaurants in the area.

In Fast Food England the Guardian has mapped out the number of fast food restaurants per 1,000 residents in each postcode area in England & Wales. After mapping the concentration of fast food restaurants the Guardian discovered that the most deprived areas in the UK tend to have the highest concentration of food food restaurants and the least deprived areas have the fewest.

You can enter a postcode or location into the map to find out the number of local fast food restaurants to 1,000 people, how that compares to the national average and the total number of takeaways in the area. You can also find out whether the number of fast food restaurants in the area has increased or decreased over the last three years. You can determine if your area has become more or less gentrified by discovering if the number of local fast food restaurants has gone down or up.

Therefore if you want to help de-gentrify your neighborhood you need to open up a local fast food restaurant. Might I suggest a fried chicken restaurant.