Greater Manchester street-level quality of place, AI-scored from Google Street View imagery. Greenery · upkeep · cleanliness · activity.
The Neighbourhood Vitality Index (NVI) is an experimental measure of street-level quality of place. Each area is scored 0–10 on four dimensions, judged from Google Street View imagery by an AI vision model:
Greenery — trees, planting, grass and verge quality · Upkeep — building fabric, windows, absence of dereliction · Cleanliness — absence of litter, fly-tipping and graffiti · Activity — open shopfronts, benches, planters, and evidence of community use. (The activity dimension was labelled “vitality” in earlier releases.)
The NVI shown is the simple mean of the four dimensions, averaged across all valid images sampled in the area.
Final release (September 2025). Imagery collection has concluded; this dataset is now frozen.
Areas are Lower-layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs, 2021 boundaries). Sample points are placed randomly inside each area's polygon, snapped to the nearest available outdoor Street View panorama (within 50 m). A sample is rejected if the image is not a usable outdoor street-level scene (e.g. indoor panoramas, aerial captures, or blurred imagery). Every LSOA in this release contains between 7 and 25 valid scored images (median 14), with sparser areas prioritised for extra sampling in earlier waves.
Areas are coloured by NVI or by the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) 2025 decile for comparison — IMD decile 1 = most deprived, 10 = least. “Images analysed” shows how many valid Street View images informed the score. Areas with few images have less reliable scores; unscored areas are shown grey.
The NVI shows a moderate positive association with the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) 2025: across all 1,701 LSOAs in Greater Manchester, NVI deciles correlate with IMD deciles at Pearson r = 0.51 (Spearman ρ = 0.53). The gradient is monotonic — the least vital NVI decile has a mean IMD decile of 2.3, the most vital 7.8 (IMD decile 1 = most deprived). This indicates the visual signal captured by the NVI tracks area deprivation, but the two are not the same measure: NVI reflects street-level quality of place, and areas that depart from the expected pattern (e.g. visually well-kept but deprived) may be of particular interest. The correlation has strengthened as image coverage has grown (r ≈ 0.33 at partial coverage in early September, ≈ 0.46 with ≥5 images per area, ≈ 0.51 at full ≥7-image coverage), largely because early sparse sampling added noise rather than signal.
| LSOAs scored | 1,701 of 1,701 in Greater Manchester (100%) |
| Street View images examined | 50,982 images fetched & screened |
| Images passing for scoring | 25,660 valid outdoor street-level images scored |
| Images per LSOA | median 14 · range 7–25 |
| Mean NVI (GM) | 6.02 / 10 |
| NVI ↔ IMD decile correlation | Pearson r = 0.51 · Spearman ρ = 0.53 |
| NVI decile gradient (mean IMD decile) | 2.33 (d1) → 7.81 (d10), monotonic |
Boroughs ranked by mean NVI, with mean IMD decile for comparison:
| Borough | Mean NVI | Mean IMD decile | LSOAs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oldham | 5.76 | 3.60 | 142 |
| Manchester | 5.85 | 2.96 | 295 |
| Bolton | 5.91 | 4.21 | 177 |
| Rochdale | 5.92 | 3.59 | 135 |
| Wigan | 6.03 | 5.03 | 200 |
| Salford | 6.05 | 3.93 | 161 |
| Bury | 6.08 | 5.23 | 120 |
| Tameside | 6.11 | 4.01 | 141 |
| Stockport | 6.29 | 6.41 | 191 |
| Trafford | 6.32 | 6.97 | 139 |
The borough ordering tracks deprivation closely (r ≈ 0.9 at borough level) — Trafford and Stockport lead on both; Manchester's combination of the lowest IMD and a mid-table NVI reflects its mix of regenerated city-centre streetscape and high-deprivation neighbourhoods, and makes it a good case study for the “well-kept but deprived” divergence the NVI is designed to surface.
This is a pilot. Scores are AI-generated and have not been human-validated. A single image captures one heading and moment in time. Activity is systematically under-captured because Street View rarely shows people or open businesses. Scores reflect the date the panorama was captured, which may be several years old. The NVI should be treated as indicative, not definitive.
Imagery: Google Street View Static API. Boundaries and deprivation data: ONS Open Geography Portal / Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (IMD 2025). Basemap: OpenStreetMap contributors. Built by The Impact Lab.