How Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants - and how I built a dashboard to see through it
“Overlaying this with the cuisine density panels reveals something even sharper. London’s culinary diversity is not evenly distributed across its platform economy. Migrant cuisines cluster strongly in parts of the city where algorithmic visibility is structurally weaker. Italian, Indian, Turkish, Chinese, Thai, British, Japanese, French, American, and fish-and-chips all trace distinct settlement histories, labour networks, retail formats, and relationships to capital and rent. Some cuisines form long, contiguous corridors. Others appear as punctuated clusters tied to specific high streets or income brackets.”