What should you know about living in Boston?

Safety is always one of the most important factors for considering accommodation or buying properties in the US. If you plan to move to Boston for jobs, school, etc., you should not miss this visual report, which will give you a good idea of crime situation in different districts of Boston

Based on the number of crime events, district A15 (Charlestown) would be the ideal district to live in, which has the lowest number of crime events. On the other hand, District B2 (Roxbury) should be avoided if you are new to Boston. Other than Charlestown, district A7 (East Boston), E5 (West Roxbury), E13 (Jamaica Plain), and E18 (Hyde Park) are relatively safe districts to live in.

Additionally, there is a seasonal criminal trend in all districts; the number of crime events starts to increase from May each year, July and August are the most unstable months. Therefore, a kind reminder would be to reduce late-night activities during summer in Boston.

Limitations of this visualization:

1. Each plot has different y axis scale, it's hard to compare across districts and might lead to wrong interpretations of all districts being on similar scales. Take as an example A1 and A15, they look as the lines are pretty similar but when looking at y-axis, A1 ranges from 4000 to 7000 while A15 is around 800 and 1200 that is a very different range and spread

2. When there are so many districts, having them as separate plots makes it difficult to compare them all as we would need to be scrolling and might not be as efficient as having them all in one plot

Which District Would be Ideal for You?

For alternate visualization, the combined line chart is more efficient for comparing all the districts. From the plot above, B2 (Roxbury) has the highest number of crime events at any point in time. Also, the following three districts: C11, D4, A1and B3 are also not very safe.

There seems to be a seasonality component on the higher crime events districts where summer is a high-risk season given the increase on crime events.

On the other hand, district A15 (Charlestown) is the one with less crime events and pretty consistent across the year. Other safe districts are A7, E5 for example.