Cambridge Independent and Chain Restaurants, Mapped

The Social Computing group at the MIT Media Lab has just launched a project called You Are Here, which consists of 100 maps each of 100 different cities, posted one per day. One of the first maps features Cambridge, Massachusetts, showing the density of independent and chain restaurants in the city.

From the Social Computing group:

We developed this map to portray the ratio, density and accessibility of chain and independent restaurants across different cities. Our observation is that chains are often clustered in parts of the city that are throughways — such as streets that are frequented by commuters, squares that attract tourists, and malls. And the presence or absence of fast-food chains tends to be a reflection of the economics of a neighborhood and the prevalence of cars.