Park Slope may be the winner of the New York Magazine best neighborhood analysis (as if that neighborhood’s collective head isn’t big enough already, what with Amy Sohn’s book and all that), but Prospect Heights is the best for the young, single and cash-strapped. So says the livability calculator, an addictive gizmo where you plug in your criteria and it spits out the best places for you to live. By that standard, Prospect Heights is right there as the city’s #2 spot, and Brooklyn’s best.
The list was put together by a fancy political pollster and 12 weighted neighborhood-evaluating criteria. Here’s the order of BK neighborhoods if you’re young, single and cash-strapped (affordability given maximum weight, schools given none, and with the other criteria mixed in):
1) Prospect Heights
2) Carroll Gardens/Gowanus
3) Williamsburg
4) Red Hook
5) Park Slope
6) Greenpoint
7) Ft. Greene/Clinton Hill
8) Cobble Hill/Boerum Hill
9) DUMBO/Downtown Brooklyn
10) Bushwick
11) Bay Ridge
12) Bed-Stuy
13) Brooklyn Heights
14) Brighton Beach
15) Sunset Park
16) Ditmas Park/Kensington
17) Sheepshead Bay
18) Crown Heights
If you tweak even further and make affordability the one and only thing that matters, Bed-Stuy’s the winner. But in that scenario, food, nightlife, shopping, transit, diversity and everything else but your cheap hovel simply doesn’t exist.
So, Prospect Heights looks pretty good. But there’s still so much to consider. How about preponderance of 99-cent stores? Or proximity to $2 drafts? Or all the other stuff that’s launched Brooklyn into brokester greatness? We’re putting the question to you: What’s the best BK neighborhood for brokesters?
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I vote for Sunset Park.
For what it’s worth, if you max out the “Affordability/Housing Cost” slider on the NYMag Livability Calculator and leave everything else as is, Park Slope remains #1 in Brooklyn (though Sunnyside edges it for #1 citywide), but Greenpoint and Prospect Heights climb past Cobble/Boerum Hill, with Bay Ridge just behind.
Boerum Hill has treated me well, but if I were not already set up for living here I would definitely seek out Fort Greene. Seems pretty affordable, accessible and mercifully un-uptight
Can somebody please tell me what we’re calling the fabulous no mans land south of the Slope (15th st) and north of Sunset Park (which is defined by the NYCMag article as below 36th)? Not what the realtors say, what it ACTUALLY is?
Aubrie, I think it’s actually Windor Terrace… at least part of it… and I love it here.
Lower East Side as no. 1? Can someone tell me how that makes any sense? I know it’s the nightlife factor, but if you’re actually cash-strapped wouldn’t you rather go out to places that don’t charge you your firstborn child for drinks?
Prospect Lefferts-Gardens. Near the park and a 3 bedroom for 1800. Seriously huge apartments for cheap.
No man’s land may be Greenwood Heights? I don’t understand why Prospect Lefferts-Gardens didn’t make this list at all – they don’t give the borders of Crown Heights, so it might’ve just gotten lumped in.
I futzed with the controls trying to make my ‘hood (DP/Kensington) inch up, but it appears stuck near the bottom. Guess it’s statistically unappealing.
“f you tweak even further and make affordability the one and only thing that matters, Bed-Stuy’s the winner.”
Dude, what are you smoking? Sunset Park, Kensington, Buswick, and most definitely Bay Ridge are much more affordable than Bed-Stuy!
All 4 of the nabes I just mentioned has some dirt cheap rentals ie 2 bedrooms $1200!
be happy if your neighborhood doesn’t top these type of lists. the lists don’t make your neighborhood any better, just more expensive eventually! seriously, i love CG but if another stinko park slope chainlet moves in bringing more of the yuppie hordes, it is going to get even pricier. ugh!
I take exception with the statement regarding Bed-Stuy: “But in that scenario, food, nightlife, shopping, transit, diversity and everything else but your cheap hovel simply doesn’t exist.
Parts of Bed-Stuy have excellent transportation, the A and C trains. We have great, new, clean groceries like the Foodtown at Restoration and the new Met on Fulton and Franklin, we have a greenmarket. Excellent restaurants; Saraghina, Peaches, close proximity to the good spots in Clinton Hill. A new French pastry/bakery direct from Paris, the Table Exquise, Bread-Stuy bakery. All this and more opening every week. Don’t write off Bed-Stuy.
It was never my intention to write off Bed-Stuy, or to pass any kind of judgment. If you play with the livability calculator a certain way, you get a certain order. Try it yourselves — it’s kind of fun. Really, no disrespect meant.
Wow…
You left out 5 very affordable areas that put the others to shame:
*Bensonhust
*Bath Beach
*Dyker Heights
*Gravesend
*Midwood
I can show you these areas are much more inexpensive and just as safe…
Guess that’s the benefit of being born and raised here.
Neighborhoods were not left off because they didn’t fit the qualifications — they were left off because they weren’t even assessed. Only 60 neighborhoods in all 5 boroughs were put into the system, so those not mentioned in the list above are not mentioned because we don’t have data for them.
So if you’re broke you should hang out and live in dumbo? really????
Since when did Gowanus shithole that it is (literally) become part of Carroll Gardens? I smell real estate developers getting ready to con…
Well, if you factor in unlimited railway passes..NJ is the cheapest by far. But oh well, this is a I love NY so much stie. Too bad lots of NJ is reclaimed swamp territory thanks to Irene.