Brooklyn on Top, by a Few Points
average livability score, Brooklyn streets vs Staten Island streets
BestAge livability score
Brooklyn leads Staten Island 53 to 49 on our livability score, and the two boroughs get there from opposite directions.
Staten Island averages 58 on quiet, the best of the five boroughs, but roughly a third of the score is about what sits within a walk. Staten Island posts the lowest walkable-food reading in the city, at 31, and shares the lowest transit reading with Queens, at 36. Half a scorecard the island wins is half a scorecard it loses.
The Island Still Owns Quiet and the Crash Record
Two columns still belong to Staten Island and they are not small ones. It leads the city on quietness, 58 to 51, and it leads this pairing on traffic safety by seven points. Both are measured against the number of people on each street, so this is not the old density discount in a new coat.
Scores count 311 complaints, HPD violations, and NYPD crash records against the people who live on a street, add what that street reaches on foot, and rank it against streets of the same kind. Updated weekly.
Cleanliness is where they part: Staten Island averages 50 on that column and Brooklyn 45, the weakest sanitation record in the city.
The Mansion Road Scores 32
Todt Hill Road's livability score. Its traffic-safety reading is zero.
Source: BestAge livability score
Todt Hill Road runs along the highest natural point in the city, past gates and hedges, and it scores 32. Its traffic-safety reading is zero, the floor of its peer group, and there is nothing within a walk of it. Hylan Boulevard and Victory Boulevard, the island's two main roads, sit in the bottom half of the table with it.
That is the pattern the score exposes: quiet with nothing around it does not score as livable. Roughly 1,511 graded Staten Island streets produce 5 A grades. Brooklyn, from a smaller set of graded streets, produces 13.
What Each Side Is Actually Buying
Brooklyn's case is reach. Its transit and food readings run well ahead of the island's, and its best blocks, Pineapple Street in Brooklyn Heights at 85 among them, pair that reach with a genuine quiet.
Staten Island's case is the odds. A street picked at random there is far more likely to be quiet than one picked in Brooklyn, and the ferry commute is a real price our data does not measure, because we score streets rather than travel time.
What we can tell you is which specific streets on either side earn their borough's reputation. Look yours up before you decide.