Philly Your Time
Making the Most in the City of Brotherly Love
Spring 2019
Since I’ll be calling Philadelphia my home for another two years, here’s how I can answer the question:
What’s there to do around here?
Each bubble on the graph represents a business with the size of the bubble representing the number of Yelp reviews, which serves as a proxy for its popularity.
Let’s Break it Down
Coffee Shops
The pattern of coffee shop distribution mirrored most of the other amenities, with the largest concentration in Downtown Philadelphia
Bookstores
Bookstores much more distributed, rather than crowded around Center City. More were located in North Philly.
Breweries
Galleries
Theaters
Juice Bars
By the Numbers
Coffee shops are the most common establishment in Philadelphia. This is expected since they do not take up much space and have a wider consumer base than the other businesses analyzed. Coffee shops included large chains such as Starbucks to unique hipster outlets like Rival Brothers. Outside of the obvious utility of caffeine, these are popular locations for young employees to relax, be productive, and meet up with friends.
The Neighborhoods to Be In
After aggregating all the results, certain neighborhoods had much more to offer than others. Rittenhouse is a popular choice for business and residents alike. With it's artsy buildings and green space in the city, it's no mystery that it has the most.
Philly Hot Spots
It's interesting to see how the personalities of the different communities are shown in the stores present. Old City is the most historical and as a result, offers many cultural activities such as art galleries and theaters. Rittenhouse square boasts the largest amount of coffeeshops. University City, located in Penn and Drexel's campus unsurprisingly offers many coffeeshops and bookstores where students can study. We also see come juice bars, whose target demographics tend to be young and health conscious.
A Broke College Student?
Good news! Most of what Philly has to offer is reasonably priced, rated only $ or $$ on Yelp. For more luxurious experiences such as art galleries, you may have to be willing to pay a bit more.
Where to go when you want to see what
Coffee connoisseurs, make sure to visit Rittenhouse and the Penn Center. If you want a theatrical experience, head to the Avenue of the Arts or see student-run plays in University City. Feeling like getting a protein shake? Penn Center and University City are the places to be!
The Experience Economy
Whether it’s a business conference, pop concert, or broadway show, there’s always something going on in Philly.
Cost of Attendance
When evaluated on price, business events were generally the most expensive. The made sense as they often included trainings that appealed to young workers wanting to expand their skillset.
More thorough analysis reveals that majority of the events cost under $40 across all event types. Outliers are business bootcamps/trainings that require fees of $500 - $2000.
Thank Goodness It’s the Weekend!
Event breakdowns also different by the day of the week. Most business events were held during the work days. Understandably, music events were most popular on the weekends.
Now, it’s time for you to explore!
Data Sources:
Eventbrite: Using Webscraper, I scraped over 1600 events from Eventbrite using the Philly filter. I looked at events with a variety of tags, from business, music, performance, and festivals and pulled from each page addresses and price information.
Yelp: Using Webscraper, I scraped over 1500 businesses from Yelp, using the filter for Philadelphia and each amenity while noting attributes such as category, neighborhood, and price.