GY7702
2022/23
Assignment 1
University of Leicester
Module convener: Dr Stefano De Sabbata
October 31st, 2022 (v1.0)
Introduction
The Centre for Cities (an independent charity and research centre) has identified housing1 as one of the key
current issues the UK is facing, and the UN-Habitat has named housing affordability as a global challenge2.
Many commentators and journalists3 have also been writing about this issue.
Housing has long been a topic at the centre of attention of studies in quantitative geography (Goodman
1978; Can 1992). In geographic information science, the past decade has seen a focus on exploring the spatial
variations in house prices using spatial statistical analysis (Páez, Farber, and Wheeler 2011; Fotheringham,
Crespo, and Yao 2015). More recently, researchers have also investigated the possibility of estimating house
prices based on new forms of big data, including remotely sensed imagery, social media and user-generated
images (Yao et al. 2018; Chen et al. 2022).
In completing this assignment, you will conduct a simpler analysis of house prices data. You will focus on
the relationship between house prices, deprivation and census data within a Local Authority District (LAD)
assigned to you in the Appendix. The aim is to explore how house prices are related to socio-demographic
variables at the local level, with the perspective of advising the local authority about key areas that might
be prioritised for support.
Instructions
Write an analysis report of no more than 750 words (excluding code, tables and references) focused on the
Local Authority District assigned to you in the Appendix and including at least three tables illustrating
the relationships between:
• house prices;
• the census sub-domain assigned to you in the Appendix;
• the deprivation index assigned to you in the Appendix.
1See the Housing section on the Centre for Cities website.
2See “Addressing the Housing Affordability Challenge: A Shared Responsibility” by Maimunah Mohd Sharif for UN-Habitat
3See, e.g., “We face peril because the UK economy relies on house prices. Here are three ways to fix that” by Fran Boait for
The Guardian, “Why a housing crash scares Britain like nothing else” by Annabelle Dickson And Esther Webber for Politico
EU, “Which areas in England are worst affected by the housing crisis? And what’s pushing up prices?” by Amy Borrett and
Carmen Aguilar Garcia for Sky News or “The housing crisis sits at the centre of Britain’s ills” by Hashi Mohamed for The
Financial Times
1
The report must include:
• the code used to generate the tables from the data outlined below;
• an introduction outlining and justifying your approach and a discussion of the results, drawing clear
links to the concepts and approaches to reproducible data science discussed in class.
The report must include the following paragraph:
This document uses data from from the Office for National Statistics, the Valuation
Office Agency, the Consumer Data Research Centre and the Ministry of Housing,
Communities & Local Government. Contains public sector information licensed under
the Open Government Licence v3.0; contains Ordnance Survey data Crown copyright
and database right 2015.
Submit your document on BlackBoard, using the form linked in the Assessment and Feedback section.
When writing up, remember that the submission should be anonymous. Do not include your name in the
document and use your Student ID as author instead. The assignment must be completed using the R
programming language.
Data
The data folder contains the five files listed below, which must be used for the sole purpose of com-
pleting this assignment – do NOT share these files.
To obtain the data to complete this assignment, follow the instructions below:
1. Access the University’s RStudio Server.
2. From the Files tab of the bottom-right panel, navigate to the /data/GY7702_CW1 data folder by clicking
the / character on the left of the address bar and then select data and finally GY7702_CW1.
3. Copy the files available in the folder to your home folder:
1. Select the check-box on the left of one of the files;
2. Select More > Copy To. . . .
3. In the Choose Destination panel, click on the three dots on the right side of the navigation bar.
4. Type-in the character ~ and click OK.
5. Click Save.
6. Repeat for each one of the files.
The five files are:
• 2011_OAC_Raw_uVariables.csv: a dataset containing the 167 variables used by Gale et al. (2016) to
create the 2011 Output Area Classification (2011OAC, see also Chris Gale’s GitHub pages, contains
public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0; contains Ordnance Survey
data © Crown copyright and database right 2015);
• 2011_OAC_Raw_uVariables_Lookup.csv: a table containing all the information (metadata) about the
167 variables included in 2011_OAC_Raw_uVariables.csv (see also Chris Gale’s GitHub pages, contains
public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0; contains Ordnance Survey
data © Crown copyright and database right 2015);
• OA11_LSOA11_MSOA11_LAD11_EW_LUv2.csv: a dataset indicating for each census Output Area (OA),
the Lower-Super Output Area (LSOA), Middle-Super Output Area (MSOA) and Local Authority
District (LAD) that contain it (sources: Office for National Statistics, contains public sector information
licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0; contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright
and database right 2015);
2
• IMD_2019_LSOA_full.csv: a dataset containing the English Indices of Multiple deprivation for 2019,
derived from a dataset from the Consumer Data Research Centre (source: Ministry of Housing, Com-
munities & Local Government, contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government
Licence v3.0)
• Median_Prices_Quarterly.csv: a dataset containing quaterly median house prices for England and
Wales, from the Consumer Data Research Centre (sources: Office for National Statistics and Valuation
Office Agency, contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0).
References
Can, Ayse. 1992. “Specification and Estimation of Hedonic Housing Price Models.” Regional Science and
Urban Economics 22 (3): 453–74.
Chen, Meixu, Yunzhe Liu, Dani Arribas-Bel, and Alex Singleton. 2022. “Assessing the Value of User-
Generated Images of Urban Surroundings for House Price Estimation.” Landscape and Urban Planning
226: 104486.
Fotheringham, A Stewart, Ricardo Crespo, and Jing Yao. 2015. “Exploring, Modelling and Predicting
Spatiotemporal Variations in House Prices.” The Annals of Regional Science 54 (2): 417–36.
Gale, Christopher G, A Singleton, Andrew G Bates, and Paul A Longley. 2016. “Creating the 2011 Area
Classification for Output Areas (2011 OAC).” Journal of Spatial Information Science 12: 1–27.
Goodman, Allen C. 1978. “Hedonic Prices, Price Indices and Housing Markets.” Journal of Urban Economics
5 (4): 471–84.
Páez, Antonio, Steven Farber, and David Wheeler. 2011. “A Simulation-Based Study of Geographically
Weighted Regression as a Method for Investigating Spatially Varying Relationships.” Environment and
Planning A 43 (12): 2992–3010.
Yao, Yao, Jinbao Zhang, Ye Hong, Haolin Liang, and Jialv He. 2018. “Mapping Fine-Scale Urban Housing
Prices by Fusing Remotely Sensed Imagery and Social Media Data.” Transactions in GIS 22 (2): 561–81.
This document and the related coursework assignment uses data from from the Office for National Statistics, the Valuation
Office Agency, the Consumer Data Research Centre and the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government. Contains
public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0; contains Ordnance Survey data Crown copyright
and database right 2015.
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Appendix
Student ID LAD (name) LAD (code) Census Sub-Domain Deprivation index
199011151 Redbridge E09000026 Employment Type Living Environment
Deprivation Domain
199014271 Medway E06000035 Living Arrangements Employment Deprivation
Domain
199015524 Bury E08000002 Employment Type Income Deprivation
Affecting Children Index
(IDACI)
199016540 Rochdale E08000005 Living Arrangements Index of Multiple
Deprivation (IMD)
209003357 Sunderland E08000024 Travel-to-Work Crime Domain
219000354 Peterborough E06000031 Living Arrangements Income Deprivation
Domain
219000358 Stockport E08000007 Employment Type Income Deprivation
Affecting Children Index
(IDACI)
219043009 Hackney E09000012 Employment Type Income Deprivation
Affecting Older People
Index (IDAOPI)
229010645 Southwark E09000028 Employment Type Income Deprivation
Domain
229012680 Milton Keynes E06000042 Travel-to-Work Index of Multiple
Deprivation (IMD)
229014489 Lambeth E09000022 Living Arrangements Living Environment
Deprivation Domain
229015675 Greenwich E09000011 Employment Type Employment Deprivation
Domain
229021553 Brighton and
Hove
E06000043 Travel-to-Work Education, Skills and
Training Domain
229022628 Wakefield E08000036 Employment Type Barriers to Housing and
Services Domain
229024162 Camden E09000007 Housing Type Barriers to Housing and
Services Domain
229026193 Sandwell E08000028 Travel-to-Work Living Environment
Deprivation Domain
229032129 Central
Bedfordshire
E06000056 Living Arrangements Barriers to Housing and
Services Domain
229032188 Bexley E09000004 Travel-to-Work Crime Domain
229032656 Dudley E08000027 Housing Type Barriers to Housing and
Services Domain
229033072 Walsall E08000030 Employment Type Index of Multiple
Deprivation (IMD)
229033769 Newcastle upon
Tyne
E08000021 Living Arrangements Index of Multiple
Deprivation (IMD)
229033780 Coventry E08000026 Living Arrangements Crime Domain
229034077 Herefordshire,
County of
E06000019 Living Arrangements Crime Domain
229034228 Hammersmith
and Fulham
E09000013 Housing Type Income Deprivation
Affecting Children Index
(IDACI)
4
229034649 Kingston upon
Hull, City of
E06000010 Living Arrangements Income Deprivation
Domain
229035371 Calderdale E08000033 Employment Type Employment Deprivation
Domain
229035667 New Forest E07000091 Employment Type Income Deprivation
Affecting Children Index
(IDACI)
229036627 Wandsworth E09000032 Housing Type Crime Domain
229037758 Portsmouth E06000044 Employment Type Health Deprivation and
Disability Domain
229038717 Westminster E09000033 Housing Type Crime Domain
229038919 Hillingdon E09000017 Employment Type Barriers to Housing and
Services Domain
229039928 Tower Hamlets E09000030 Housing Type Crime Domain
229040002 Wolverhampton E08000031 Housing Type Employment Deprivation
Domain
229040074 Merton E09000024 Housing Type Crime Domain
229040079 Trafford E08000009 Employment Type Crime Domain
229040244 Waltham Forest E09000031 Travel-to-Work Living Environment
Deprivation Domain
229040703 York E06000014 Housing Type Barriers to Housing and
Services Domain
229041230 Lewisham E09000023 Living Arrangements Health Deprivation and
Disability Domain
229041240 Luton E06000032 Travel-to-Work Health Deprivation and
Disability Domain
229041313 Brent E09000005 Employment Type Income Deprivation
Affecting Children Index
(IDACI)
229041836 Enfield E09000010 Employment Type Health Deprivation and
Disability Domain
229041970 East Riding of
Yorkshire
E06000011 Living Arrangements Employment Deprivation
Domain
229042320 Warrington E06000007 Housing Type Income Deprivation
Affecting Children Index
(IDACI)
229043292 Shropshire E06000051 Living Arrangements Crime Domain
229043587 Bolton E08000001 Employment Type Income Deprivation
Affecting Older People
Index (IDAOPI)
229043627 St. Helens E08000013 Living Arrangements Index of Multiple
Deprivation (IMD)
229045172 Stoke-on-Trent E06000021 Housing Type Crime Domain
229046016 Plymouth E06000026 Employment Type Education, Skills and
Training Domain
229046851 Solihull E08000029 Housing Type Income Deprivation
Affecting Children Index
(IDACI)
229047428 Bromley E09000006 Housing Type Index of Multiple
Deprivation (IMD)
5
229047587 Derby E06000015 Housing Type Education, Skills and
Training Domain
229047987 Hounslow E09000018 Travel-to-Work Health Deprivation and
Disability Domain
229048062 Nottingham E06000018 Housing Type Crime Domain
229048463 Doncaster E08000017 Employment Type Barriers to Housing and
Services Domain
229048913 Barnsley E08000016 Employment Type Income Deprivation
Affecting Children Index
(IDACI)
229049093 Oldham E08000004 Housing Type Living Environment
Deprivation Domain
229049420 Stockton-on-Tees E06000004 Employment Type Income Deprivation
Affecting Children Index
(IDACI)
229049652 Swindon E06000030 Travel-to-Work Barriers to Housing and
Services Domain
229049788 Salford E08000006 Living Arrangements Employment Deprivation
Domain
229050047 Harrow E09000015 Housing Type Crime Domain
229050807 Tameside E08000008 Living Arrangements Living Environment
Deprivation Domain
229051288 Ealing E09000009 Employment Type Education, Skills and
Training Domain
229051336 Bath and North
East Somerset
E06000022 Living Arrangements Education, Skills and
Training Domain
229051368 Richmond upon
Thames
E09000027 Travel-to-Work Index of Multiple
Deprivation (IMD)
229051617 Newham E09000025 Housing Type Health Deprivation and
Disability Domain
229051670 Sutton E09000029 Travel-to-Work Living Environment
Deprivation Domain
229051725 South
Gloucestershire
E06000025 Housing Type Education, Skills and
Training Domain
229052033 Wirral E08000015 Employment Type Income Deprivation
Domain
229052549 Cheshire West
and Chester
E06000050 Housing Type Health Deprivation and
Disability Domain
229052641 Sefton E08000014 Travel-to-Work Barriers to Housing and
Services Domain
229052698 Rotherham E08000018 Living Arrangements Living Environment
Deprivation Domain
229053139 North Tyneside E08000022 Employment Type Index of Multiple
Deprivation (IMD)
229054025 Wigan E08000010 Housing Type Living Environment
Deprivation Domain
229055203 Haringey E09000014 Employment Type Crime Domain
229055610 North Somerset E06000024 Housing Type Education, Skills and
Training Domain
229056008 Barnet E09000003 Living Arrangements Education, Skills and
Training Domain
6
229056834 Southampton E06000045 Travel-to-Work Health Deprivation and
Disability Domain
229057605 Islington E09000019 Travel-to-Work Employment Deprivation
Domain
229059336 Havering E09000016 Living Arrangements Barriers to Housing and
Services Domain
7