Nov
9
The shape of Allston
Posted by nathanael. Filed Under misc
After it was pointed out that several local news sources (both the Herald and the Globe and at least one TV station) put the unfortunate events of Sunday morning in Brighton rather than Allston, I saw several comments along the lines of “so what?”. Does the A/B distinction matter? Obviously if we have people getting stabbed in well populated areas immediate safety is a bit more of a pressing concern than geographical quibbles but location and place isn’t something to be dismissed out of hand. People who live here tend to make the distinction, with varying degrees of confidence based on proximity to the various community epicenters. And if something matters to people living here, then applying the law of logical circularity, it matters.
Since there’s no formal, definitive boundary between Allston/Brighton that I know of (though it seems District Court Judge David Donnelly might have some ideas), here’s an overlay of the Boston Neighborhood Map definition (shaded in purple) and the probabilistic flickr reverse geocoded shape file (the red outline, courtesy of Tom Taylor’s Boundaries project). I rather like how that latter gives us most of Cambridgeport, Central Square and half of Harvard Yard. Click through for the bigger version.
If you have better information, please share. For some historical perspective on which came first (hint: not Allston), check this.
<Allston | geocoding | maps>
Comments
6 Responses to “The shape of Allston”
Leave a Reply
Boundary between Allston and Brighton: zip code 02134 vs. 02135.
The western boundary is delineated by Everett Street all the way south to North Beacon Street. Union Square is 100% in Allston; the zip code boundary wanders a couple blocks SW of it.
BTW: North Allston and North Brighton are those parts of each neighborhood north of the Mass Pike.
Two more things:
(1) Allston also includes the zip code 02163, the corner of the neighborhood occupied by Harvard Business School.
(2) Here is a link of the U.S. Census map of the 02134 zip code:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/MapItDrawServlet?context=AdvSearch&geo_id=86000US02134&tree_id=420&_lang=en&_bucket_id=50
How about shapefiles based on zip code? For example: this screenshot of Google Earth with zip code layer turned on.
Yeah there has to be a better way to combine those zip code boundaries than my quick googlemaps photoshop overlay. Someone proficient in ArcGIS would probably already have it done. Thanks for both of these links.
As the first poster said, the line runs down Everett to No. Beacon and then it continues south down Gordon St. all the way to Comm Ave.
The line runs up everett, takes a RIGHT on N. Beacon, takes a LEFT up Saunders, back east on Cambridge, Takes a right on Gordon….