Finding an Apartment Using GIS Part 2

Yesterday I posted about how I narrowed my apartment search to smaller list using GIS techniques. If you have not read that one I highly suggest going back and reading Part 1 first.

I have my list but now there is another factor I want to include. I just received an offer for a part time job at PretendJob Inc. and I want my new home to be close to both the job location and to my school. I can use the same radius tool for this but now I have two, hopefully, overlapping circles instead of only one. The purple triangle represent my work and the blue dot is school, because I will be at school more than the job I made the circle for work bigger because I am willing to live farther from work than I am for school. 

Now I can see what apartments are within the two locations.

On the previous post I located the shuttle stops and what locations are within walking distance but the map I had was zoomed in on a 5 mile radius of the University. There were actually other shuttle stops farther than that 5 mile distance and I want to include those in my selection, who cares how far camus is if you have a shuttle! Had I not plotted all the shuttle stops I might have missed this cluster of apartments. 

Another scenario is if I wasn't looking for a apartment but a house. Since I can't simply google search "houses for sale", at least I don't think I can, I would narrow down the neighborhoods and look for houses either by driving around or searching real estate sites. I first outlined the residential area, then I will use similar tactics as before. This time instead of using a radial outline of something I want to be close to I will use it for something I don't want to be near. Let's pretend I am a terrible person and I hate children, dogs, and happiness in general. I don't want to live near a park or school, so I made a border around all the schools and parks and whatever is left is where I might like to live.

Now I know what areas to not look for a home if I was heartless. But in all reality school zones are quite annoying.

You can use these techniques for anything like the nearest grocery store or what school you want to go to (if you have options), in any city not just San Marcos. I had fun just messing around with the dry erase markers and plastic!