I would love to see this color-coded with average house/apartment prices --- to see if each arc is equitable or if you can see a pattern ( +10% by the water, etc).
It's not 100% accurate, but it gives you a rough estimate of time to the Hub vs. rent. In general, the biggest selling point for Boston apartment seekers is proximity to the T and time to commute to the the Financial District (near Goverment Center). Areas near colleges (BU, MIT, Havard, Northeastern) are also high rent because college students eat up most of the housing.
Unfortunately it doesn't line up all that well because of the heavy distortion of the time scale map. For example the red area in the upper left corner is clearly the Mass Ave corridor in Cambridge, which in real life lines up with the red line, but you can't see that in the overlay.
Housing prices also depend heavily on a neighborhood's crime rate, school rankings and other quality of life issues which vary significantly even among physically adjacent neighborhoods (at least there are lots of examples of that in NYC). So I doubt you'd find a simple relationship between time from the city center and real estate prices.
But there are many exceptions. For example, Cambridge (red), Somerville (yellow), Chelsea (green) and Roxbury (blue) are all within approximately the same distance of the center.
Distance to a T station, not to downtown. Cambridge and Somerville are considerably more expensive than Roxbury generally. Within any of the neighborhoods you listed, you'll find that rent goes up as you get closer to a T station.
It's not 100% accurate, but it gives you a rough estimate of time to the Hub vs. rent. In general, the biggest selling point for Boston apartment seekers is proximity to the T and time to commute to the the Financial District (near Goverment Center). Areas near colleges (BU, MIT, Havard, Northeastern) are also high rent because college students eat up most of the housing.
As an active apartment seeker in Boston, the original heatmap data source is generally pretty accurate: http://www.jefftk.com/apartment_prices/index