What’s in a name? Do you live in Portobello or Joppa? Where does Granton end and Pilton begin? What about the West End and Haymarket?
Things like addresses and street names are hard-and-fast, but neighbourhoods are often fuzzy at the edges and where they start and end depends on who you ask.
But how do you put that on a map?
One ingenious computer whizz has found a way, using data from Gumtree online ads listing items for sale across the city.
Here's how it works: back in the day when you wanted to make a free ad on Gumtree you had to put in both your postcode AND say which neighbourhood you lived in separately – with those two pieces of data coder Saintamh was able to map where people lived against which neighbourhoods they said they lived in.
It sounds long-winded – but essentially the result is a mad multi-colour venn-diagram of overlapping neighbourhoods and its a lot of fun to look through.
Click on the link below to see for yourself.
The map does show that there is a good deal of overlap, indicating there are lots of people who disagree with their next door neighbour concerning the name of the area they both live in.
The map, which was posted on Reddit a few days ago, drew plenty of comments form Edinburgh residents.
“I love how enormous Duddingston is taking in parts of Mountcastle, Niddrie and The Jewel. Reflects my experience of people from totally-not-Duddingston claiming they live in Duddingston,” said one commenter.
“In fact the only bit not included in 'Duddingston' is Duddingston village itself, presumably because people there are too classy to use Gumtree.”
Another joked: “The Colinton Empire continues expanding into the free peoples of Middle Edinburgh I see.”
Take a look at the map for yourself here and then come back and see how it compares to Edinburgh Council’s official ‘natural neighbourhoods’ map below.
For the council’s map they didn’t use Gumtree listings, they just asked people. The first natural neighbourhoods consultation was in 2004 and it was updated in 2014.
Do you agree with the council map or the Gumtree version which shows Edinburgh residents own ideas about where they live?
