Where do cool and trendy bibliophiles live?

The answer is: Nørrebro, Copenhagen.

8 out of 10 homes in Nørrebro have a home library that holds more than 186 books on average. How does that compare to the rest of the world? The global average is less than 3 homes out of 10.

How did we find out the numbers above?

Biblu is a platform that builds libraries within local communities.

It works best in neighborhoods with an abundance of books and book lovers.

To know where to launch the platform first, we wanted to know two things,

1. What are the coolest and trendiest neighborhoods on Earth? (Where can we find early adopters?)

2. Are the tenants of those cool neighborhoods obsessed with books? (Where can we find book-loving early adopters?)
   

We ran a survey at biblu that visited 5,300 homes in the trendiest 53 neighborhoods worldwide.

According to Forbes, TimeOut, TripAdvisor, and others,

#Andersonville (#Chicago), #Belleville (#Paris), #Dalston (#London), #Nørrebro (#Copenhagen), #Chelsea (#NewYork), #Shimokitazawa (#Tokyo), #Leith (#Edinburgh), #Södermalm (#Stockholm), #Noord (#Amsterdam), #Katong (#Singapore), #Stoneybatter (#Dublin), #SilverLake (#LosAngeles), and #Richmond (#Melbourne) and 41 others neighborhoods are frequently described or named among most extraordinary communities of the world. Why?

These are neighborhoods that have high saturations of entrepreneurs and creatives. They are also neighborhoods that are most culturally vibrant and diverse. And it is safe to claim that those neighborhoods set the trend for the greater surrounding areas.

Using Airbnb, we walked into 5,300 properties (a random sample of 100 in each neighborhood). But, of course, we didn't walk-walk into those properties but looked at every picture posted by hosts of those properties on a mission to find home libraries (20 books or more stacked on a shelf). Some homes had libraries in living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, or cookbooks in kitchens, and of course, some in the toilet.

How Airbnb helped us at biblu find the size of books in neighborhoods around the world?

(Btw. If you love traveling like a local and want to stay at Airbnb homes with good home libraries, ping us. We have the complete list with links and prices).

In the graph below, you can see a comparison of 53 neighborhoods worldwide with Airbnb properties found with a home library.

Comparing 53 neighborhoods around the world with Airbnb properties found with a home library. (Source: biblu, August 2022)

The ranking above gave us a good idea of what are the most book-obsessed neighborhoods around the world. But to further know how many books we can find in those neighborhoods, we had to zoom into every picture of every home library in all Airbnb properties we've visited and count the books on the shelves.

In the graph below, you can see how many books, on average, a home library holds in every neighborhood.

Comparing average number of books found in a home library across top book loving neighborhoods. (Source: biblu, August 2022)

So how many books can one find in a book-loving neighborhood?

Using data sets shared by city municipalities across the world, we got a sense of how many books one can find in a neighborhood by following this formula:

The average number of books on a shelf in Neighborhood N

x

Percent of Airbnb properties with a home library in Neighborhood N

x

Number of properties in Neighborhood N

=

Number of books in Neighborhood N

One must keep in mind this survey has its flaws and is barely a humble attempt to answer the following question "How many books can one find in a neighborhood."

There are so many factors that one must keep in mind when reading those numbers:

1. Homes are only partially randomly selected. These are properties listed on Airbnb.

2. People from different cultural backgrounds list properties on Airbnb differently. For instance, it's normal in the Nordics to find Airbnb properties listed by the homeowner that feels cozier and intimate and has components found in a genuine home, such as a home library. On the contrary, properties listed in Marina (Dubai) or Katong (Singapore) are more hotel-like polished properties listed by property managers and owned by multi-millionaire investors. Hence, the current Airbnb samples do not reflect reality in places like Singapore and Dubai. Surely, those cities have far more bibliophiles than the data suggests.

3. Sample sizes per neighborhood are not sufficient and should vary with a neighborhood's size. We took a simple and standard sample size across all neighborhoods. There's an opportunity to improve the survey by following scientific sample sizing for better data quality.

4. The survey does not count digital books (ebooks and audiobooks) and only looks at physical books.