Solution to display 'places' nearby a specific location

Hi all,

I am building a website on d7 which will present a list of 'places'.
For each selected 'place', the visitor should also see other 'recommended' places that are nearby.

These places are located in a small geographic area and therefore there is no objective to provide a full blown intelligent service that calculates distances etc.

My proposed solution is to use taxonomy to split the location I am interested in geographic parts such as south, southwest, north, central etc and categorise individual places accordingly. Then, use Views and Blocks to present them as appropriate.

However, I would love to hear any other, more creative or innovative solutions.

Just for the record, I am currently using Geocoder, GeoPHP and GeoField Map to render places on a map

Thanks in advance