Ideally something like 5min bike ride to the grocery store, 15min walk from a train station, and 30min drive to my in-law’s house.
It would be really interesting to do something like “10 minute bike ride to 3 or more grocery stores”. That would help reduce instances of niche specific stores, but also provides a much more useful variety.
I’d love to be able to find places that have 2+ or 3+ grocery stores within somewhat reasonable distance, and same thing goes for restaurants. Really any restaurant.
1. User defines a "multi-location" spec, like "MyFastFood" as "Having [2] or more of [Fast Food] excluding [Taco Bell,]"
2. User defines a requirement for their heat map which references the multi-location, ex: "Within [30 minutes] to [walk] to [MyFastFood]"
3. Within the context of a particular [user's requirement] and broad [city/town/region], a 2D area/gradient can be generated, and cached for a rather considerable period given how slowly businesses open/close.
Granted, that's the ambitious version. A simpler one would be to not support "at least X", and to combine the multi-location and the distance-rules all together into a single condition.
- There are tons of grocery stores (efficiency of processing all of those)
- Not all grocery stores are the same (supermarkets vs pricey luxury stores vs bodegas)
I've been thinking of mass processing one-time then allowing the user to super-impose pre-made heatmaps onto thier existing heatmap.