Manhattan vs Bronx

For two years this page carried an upset: the Bronx outscoring Manhattan on three of four measures. That result was an artifact of dividing complaints by street length, and it is gone. Manhattan averages 64 to the Bronx's 47.

The distance is not one thing. Manhattan leads eight of the nine dimensions, most clearly on quietness at 43 to 34, and the Bronx takes only cleanliness, 48 to 46. Manhattan then wins the access half of the score outright, since a Bronx street reaches roughly half the trains and shops a Manhattan street does.

Heat and hot water is the most-filed 311 complaint type in Manhattan and the second most-filed in the Bronx, which is unusual: everywhere else in the city the top of the log is a street nuisance rather than something broken indoors.

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.

The Bronx carries more recorded HPD violations than any other borough, and its housing score averages 28, the lowest figure any borough posts on any of the nine dimensions in the model. If you rent in either borough, October through April is when the building's record gets tested, and the street-level HPD count is the cheapest advance warning available.

The borough average is not the whole borough. Of the 200 streets with the best traffic-safety readings in the city, 55 are in the Bronx, more than any other borough contributes, and they sit on residential blocks in the northeast and up the Riverdale ridge. Bartow Avenue scores 84 with a perfect quietness reading, the best street in the borough.

What drags the average is noise. The Bronx files more residential-noise reports than any borough in the city and posts the lowest quietness average of the five, at 34.

The corridors tell on both sides of the Harlem River. St. Nicholas Avenue in Manhattan and Arthur Avenue in the Bronx both land within a point of the citywide median of 50, and East Fordham Road posts a traffic-safety reading of zero, the floor of its peer group. Nothing in those numbers respects the borough line.