Visual story

The Starbucks index

Economists have long joked that a Starbucks moving in is the surest sign a neighbourhood is gentrifying. In New Jersey the shops do sort the towns: each bubble below is a kind of shop, placed by how much dearer the towns that have one are than the other towns in their county.

Starbucks or Dunkin’?

More StarbucksEvenMore Dunkin’

Each dot is a town with at least two of the chains between them.

Shops: OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License; the counts are offered under the same licence. Volunteer-mapped, so a shop nobody added is missing. Prices: Zillow’s typical home value, each town against its own county. A chain opens where it expects customers; this shows which towns those are, not that the shop raises prices. More visual stories →