Patrick Filler

Ranking NYC’s Neighborhoods

New York Magazine asked statistician Nate Silver to try and objectively rate the neighborhoods of New York City. He used a wealth of city data and a number of factors to determine the top 50 neighborhoods. Brooklyn comes away smelling like roses — holding 6 of the top 10 spots.

Nate’s model is thoughtful and interesting and the article is well worth a read. However, as he writes on his blog, the real star is the “Livability Calculator.”

The coolest part, rather, is an interactive applet that allows you to determine for yourself the relative importance you attach to 12 different categories of data (housing cost, housing quality, transit/proximity, crime, schools, green space, food/restaurants, health and wellness, shopping and services, diversity, “creative capital” and nightlife). If you play around with the applet for long enough, you’ll find that it’s fairly easy to slot any of 15 or so neighborhoods into the top position, and any of 40 or so of the 60 that we evaluated into the top ten.

The calculator is a lot of fun to play with. If you’re looking for property (whether to rent or own), this would be a great way to choose neighborhoods to focus on.