Zillow provides shapefiles describing nearly 7000 neighbourhoods in the largest US cities. This information is licensed under a Creative Commons license. See their page for more information.
http://www.zillow.com/howto/api/neighborhood-boundaries.htm
I use python to convert the shape files into a simple sqlite database. You'll need to install sqlalchemy and pyshp
easy_install sqlalchemy
easy_install pyshp
Run the "MakeShapes.py" to convert the shape files.
The shape files (or rather the shape data in the sqlite file) are displayed on a MapKit MKMapView using overlays.
Don't forget to do a submodule update!
This is just a crude proof of concept. The iOS app is actually less interesting than the rest of the repository. Which shows how to take a .shp file, process it using python and then export it with Python into Objective-C
This is just quick & dirty test code. Do not use in production. Respect the Zillow license!
Memory management. I can see this eating a lot of memory. That should be avoided.
- Make an app that tells you what neighbourhood you're in
- Make an app that uses background CoreLocation APIs to monitor when you enter a bad neighbour
- Something something geo game.