Mapping the World . . . One Neighborhood at a Time

Fig. 1. Berkeley neighborhood imagery, (a) 1901 Berkeley subdivision map, (b) U.C. Berkeley recognized zone and (c) 2008 Berkeley neighborhood map. The human brain has a limited capacity to store and process large quantities of information. To handle overwhelming complexities of details the mind will often breakdown large chunks of data into manageable blocks for processing [1]. A prominent topic where information gets segmented is in place identification. In geography, areas are frequently divided into smaller regions. In the United States, the country is a collection of states and territories comprised of counties with cities and towns. These regions are further subdivided into officially recognized designations: zip codes, census block groups and census tracks based on numeric designations. This article will outline a process used for breaking down cities and towns into alternative regions, ones structured on name recognition 1 : 1 Based on informal sampling of over 25 people who reside in the San Francisco Bay Area to see how many could name their neighborhood vs. census block. A majority could name their neighborhood or a near by neighborhood, most residence did not know what constituted a census block and only one person responded with a census block answer. It was not confirmed if it actually was a correct answer. In the future a more formal study should be done on the number of people who can accurately define which neighborhood they reside in.