Lab 2 - What's Happening in the Town

 Historic Georgetown, an Unknown Treasure

As the oldest neighborhood in Seattle, Georgetown has undergone a lot of transformation since its conception. Underappreciated and relatively unknown, the neighborhood has less foot traffic than many other parts of the city, yet there is no dearth of activities for a visitor to partake in. Historically, Georgetown was known for the number of breweries in the neighborhood, as well as the freight hub it contains. In recent decades, it has experienced a revival, the neighborhood has maintained its industrial, brick, warehouse look, while the interiors now contain microbreweries, pubs, art studios, and more. It is best suited for a younger crowd, or people without children, because many of the activities are geared towards those who are of age to drink.

Set apart from the more premier Seattle destinations, it seemed to me like Georgetown doesn't get the attention it deserves. It has the potential to be quite a profitable tourist destination, as well as an enjoyable place for Seattle residents to spend an evening. In terms of getting to Georgetown, without a car, it is one of those Seattle locations that can be quite inconvenient to reach. Since the main attractions of the neighborhood are bars and taverns, convenient public transportation is essential, and despite being a transportation hub, Georgetown has yet to improve upon its accessibility.

To put together the infographic, my partner and I used a web scraper on Yelp to pull out just a few of the things someone can do in Georgetown, many of which were brewery-based, which was what we figured see after my time in the field. Initially, we thought we would focus our topic on just drinking establishments, but our first few attempts at web scraping with just that subject in mind were far from fruitful. We then chose to make the topic more general and were able to develop a larger database of locations and reviews. The map was made with GIS and shows the locations within the neighborhood. All the activities are within a small radius, clustered in the downtown area, because outside of that Georgetown is mostly rail lines and an international airport. The proximity of the airport to the rest of the neighborhood adds another dimension to the industrial vibe of the area, planes fly closely overhead several times in an hour and the noise is pretty incessant. The activities are well-suited to these characteristics of Georgetown and as you can see in the reviews, people seem to really enjoy spending time in the neighborhood.

My partner and I worked well together despite never meeting in person. I found it significantly easier to distribute the workload and maintain communication with just one person rather than three. The way we divided things was I went into the field and took notes and completed the sketch and then added my observation to the Jamboard. Bella put together the CSV and coded the radial dendrogram. Using the CSV, I then created the map in the center in QGIS. Bella and I definitely managed our time differently, Bella tended to work on things earlier than they were due while I pretty consistently left things to the last minute, but during the planning process we set deadlines for ourselves for different parts of the project and so we were able to collaborate well together despite. Next time, I would probably like to get an earlier start on my portion of the tasks so that I can help with troubleshooting. Also, I always have trouble with the quality of my maps in QGIS and I am not sure if there is a way to fix that. That is something I would like to work on for the next project and with an earlier start I can get more help with little things like that.