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By Steven Shi, Urban Informatics, Fall 2024
Image credit: Neuebauhaus, Wikimedia
In an increasingly digital world, equitable access to public Wi-Fi is essential for fostering connected communities, especially for metropolitans like New York City (NYC). Across NYC, the distribution of public Wi-Fi hotspots is visualized through maps, plots, and charts. Using Manhattan as a case study, this website also explores the relationship between Wi-Fi hotspot distribution and demographic characteristics across Manhattan's diverse neighborhoods. By visualizing data on income levels, ages, and public Wi-Fi density, this project and the maps offer insights into the accessibility of digital infrastructure and the socioeconomic factors that may influence it. Dive into the map to uncover patterns, surprises, and areas of opportunity for bridging digital divides.
Research Question:
Research Question:
How are public Wi-Fi hotspot locations distributed across NYC, and what is their relationship with key demographic variables?
Since public internet access should be most beneficial to areas that are socially vulnerable, this project is trying to explore the relationship between density of public internet and demographic variables such as income and age. A hypothesis for the income variable specifically is shown below.
Hypothesis: Density of public Wi-Fi hotspots has a negative correlation with income level in NYC.
Explorations
Explorations
How are public Wi-Fi hotspot locations distributed across NYC?
Explore public Wi-Fi hotspot locations in NYC through this interactive map.
What is the relationship of the distribution of public Wi-Fi hotspot location in NYC and income level?
What is the relationship of the distribution of public Wi-Fi hotspot location in NYC and age?
Conclusion
Conclusion
From the analysis, it is evident that the relationship between public Wi-Fi hotspot density and demographic factors such as median household income and age is complex and not strongly linear. While exploring the data provided some insights, it also highlighted the limitations of overlaying maps with different variables and simple correlation analysis for understanding the distribution of public Wi-Fi in NYC.
The bivariate maps revealed some spatial patterns against the hypothesis, such as areas with low income or a lower percentage of young adults often having lower Wi-Fi densities, but these trends were not consistent across all census tracts. Quantitative analysis using scatter plots with best-fit lines further supported this observation, showing weak positive correlations for income and age, with r being 0.19 and 0.14 respectively. The potential reason for these results might be the existence of other variables that are more correlated with access to public internet partly observable from the distribution map, such as the pattern that areas with higher density of public Wi-Fi also tend to have higher density of commercial sites and businesses.
This project and the results suggest that other variables, such as population density, land use, or policy interventions, may play a significant role in determining Wi-Fi accessibility. Future research efforts that explore these variables and their relationship with access to public internet are needed to provide more insights on the research questions.
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