Nate Silver rates New York City’-s neighborhoods.
Jason Ruspini:
The piece is problematic insofar as it underweights proximity to areas where people work, which results in high ratings for distant neighborhoods and low ratings for central ones, on top of the effect of higher rents in central neighborhoods. True, if you work from home, it might make more sense to live in the outer boroughs. But if you have a one hour + commute every day, it doesn’-t really help that you happen to live near a subway stop and thus have a relatively high “-transit”- rating.
For the restaurant category, he seems to be considering quantity but not quality. How else does Long Island City have a higher rating than Gramercy/Flatiron, where 9 of the top 50 Zagats restaurants are located? I don’-t even think that Long Island City beats Gramercy/Flatiron in terms of quantity either.
Ultimately, of course, preferences are too subjective to give one ordinal ranking, but the distance-to-average-work-location issue seems glaring, and increases the outer borough bias.