To all those who defend the Park Slope Food Co-op as a Garden of Eden flourishing within the city's most heavenly neighborhood, you're absolutely right! Professional stat geek Nate Silver (of fivethirtyeight.com fame) ranked NYC's 50 most livable neighborhoods for New York magazine, and Park Slope came out on top. The Lower East Side finished second, and Sunnyside(!) took bronze. The top 10 is heavy on brownstone Brooklyn, which Silver explains is "largely due to how we calibrated the cost variable: Pay slightly less attention to price, and Manhattan starts to dominate; if price matters more, a number of Queens neighborhoods rise toward the top. But this group of Brooklyn neighborhoods is generally the most balanced in the city, with few obvious drawbacks and plenty of charm." Is the cost of housing what makes a neighborhood great? Of course not.
While price-per-square-foot (both renting and buying) was the most heavily weighted variable, Silver and his gang also ranked the 'hoods according to 11 other qualities, including green space, transit options, public school performance, crime rates, density of dining and nightlife (which was judged as a good thing, by the way) and "creative capital," which sounds like the hipster factor. Park Slope's win not controversial enough? Then do scan through the entire list, where you'll find the Upper East Side (#35) and Upper West Side (#36) settled comfortably between traditional powerhouses Red Hook (#33) and Washington Heights (#37). The Gold Coast ain't got nothin' on Van Brunt Street!
But that's only the beginning of the fun in New York's Neighborhoods issue. There's also the Ace Hotel-led rise of NoMad (WhoDi to us, 'natch), the hipsters vs. Hasids battle for South Williamsburg and the beachfront homes that are actually selling in Rockaway. And how about a little real estate prognostication? A crew of experts weigh in on the hot 'hood of 2014, and the usual suspects (Bushwick, FiDi) get namechecked along with some surprises (Flushing, Southern Yorkville). Not even supplying much of the cast of Jersey Shore could get Staten Island a mention.
· The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York [NYM]
· The Neighborhoods Issue [NYM]
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