Booth Survey - Simei East

Category - 2

You will be making a Booth-style socio-economic map of the Simei neighborhood near the SUTD campus. Walk around the neighborhood and make detailed observations -- using these observations, your first task is to determine 4 socioeconomic categories that range from low to high. Take subsequent walks to determine the SES category for each area or block. Feel free to assign more than one category for a block if you feel it is required. Some places are harder to classify than others: grappling with that difficulty is part of this exercise. Note or annotate areas of particular difficult (if any). Semi-private and public spaces like parks can be given categories as well. Hand in your exercise at the beginning of next class. While working on this, think about some of these questions:

• How do you determine the category labels? Are there different ways of categorizing and are some categorizations more valid than others?
• How do you determine whether a block is in one category versus another? What does your decision process look like?
• What if you wanted to be a 21st century Booth? Are his methods and data sources still valid or do we have better data and methods at our disposal now? What are some examples of this?
• A key argument of Batty’s Science of Cities is a move towards looking at networks or systems of interactions. If you put yourself in Batty’s shoes, how would he approach the exercise (differently)?