r/Glasgow Tools

> Still armchair science, how about going out to the actual streets themselves and take photographs and conduct research. Speak to communities and local councils. Google Street View is only going to tell you so much, I wouldn’t trust that as a validating source compared to going out to these areas and conducting research from lived experience.
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To some extent google street view can be informative as a proxy if if's consistent. If there's non-random variation, e.g. it takes some stuff as litter and some other stuff as *not* inconsistently across regions then yeah - problem. But if it's an even-handed snapshot of places then it can be useful.

> Especially since fast food / take aways are all over the city not just in poorer areas.

That might be the case in Glasgow but it's quite well observed on average that more deprived areas have more fast-food restaurants. In the US there's quite good evidence that a Walmart can *causally* increase surrounding deprivation.

> Also drawing conclusions and statistics from the SIMD isn’t going to be accurate in the sense that just because a specific area is lower on the social mobility ladder, prone to unemployment, poverty, poorer nutritional diets does not make that area any worse

He/she aren't implying they're worse in some dispositional way, just asking the question: do more deprived areas have more litter, which could be for a million reasons.

SIMD has its flaws but all measures of deprivation are only a proxy. Townsend deprivation index for example is basically just postcode.