ESmap

How the scores are calculated

ESmap scores every neighborhood of Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid on four axes — status, calm, urban convenience and family — from INE 2023, Catastro and municipal open data. Method, sources and limitations.

Four independent axes

Every neighborhood gets four scores: 💰 wealth & status, 🌳 calm & green, 🚇 urban convenience and 👨‍👩‍👧 family-friendliness. Each score is a weighted sum of several open-data indicators. There is deliberately no single overall score — a neighborhood that is perfect for a family with children can be a poor fit for someone who wants nightlife within walking distance, so the four axes are kept separate.

What goes into each axis

💰 Wealth & status
Net household income and poverty rates (INE Atlas 2023) plus social-vulnerability indices.
🌳 Calm & green
Strategic noise maps, green-zone coverage and traffic intensity.
🚇 Urban convenience
The density of bus stops, municipal services and everyday amenities.
👨‍👩‍👧 Family-friendly
Playgrounds, nurseries, primary schools and the share of children in the population.

Standardisation: z-scores within one city

Raw indicators are standardised as z-scores across the neighborhoods of one city, then combined. A score of 0 means “city average”; +1 means one standard deviation better than average. Because standardisation happens within each city, scores are comparable between neighborhoods of the same city but not between cities.

Data sources

INE Atlas de Distribución de Renta de los Hogares 2023 (income, poverty and demographics at census-section level); Catastro INSPIRE buildings (construction years, dwelling counts); the municipal open-data portals of Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid (noise maps, green zones, transit stops, municipal facilities, playgrounds, schools); and regional vulnerability studies. Exact datasets and years differ slightly per city — the interactive map shows the per-city formula tables.

Limitations

Open data is imperfect: some datasets are snapshots from different years, small peripheral neighborhoods have sparser data, and administrative boundaries do not always match perceived neighborhood borders. Treat the scores as a starting point for your own research, not a verdict.

Open the interactive map →

Other cities: Valencia Barcelona Madrid