I am clustering data with numeric and categorical variables. To process the categorical variables for the cluster model, I create dummy variables. However, I feel like this results in a higher importance for these dummy variables because multiple dummy variables represent one categorical variable.
For example, I have a categorical variable Airport that will result in multiple dummy variables: LAX, JFK, MIA and BOS. Now suppose I also have a numeric Temperature variable. I also scale all variables to be between 0 and 1. Now my Airport variable seems to be 4 times more important than the Temperature variable, and the clusters will be mostly based on the Airport variable.
My problem is that I want all variables to have the same importance. Is there a way to do this? I was thinking of scaling the variables in a different way but I don't know how to scale them in order to give them the same importance.