Level on the One Number That Combines Everything
average livability score, Queens streets vs Bronx streets. The closest borough pairing on the site.
BestAge livability score
Queens and the Bronx finish on the same number, and it is the only borough pairing in the city where that happens. Underneath the tie they agree on almost nothing.
Queens takes quietness 53 to 34, the second-best quiet average in the city against the worst. The Bronx takes traffic safety by six points, and Queens takes cleanliness by eight. Two boroughs arriving at the same score from opposite ends of the table is a more useful fact than either average on its own.
Housing Is Where the Bronx Loses Renters
the Bronx's average housing score as a share of Queens'. It is the weakest housing reading in the city.
Source: HPD violation records, counted per home
One column separates these boroughs more than any score does. The Bronx posts the weakest housing readings in the city, roughly half of what Queens averages on the same dimension, which counts HPD violations against the homes exposed to them.
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.
Bronx streets themselves hold up in the columns above. Bronx building stock is where the borough's problems concentrate, which is why a renter comparing the two should read the street's housing score rather than the borough average.
Noise Borough, Parking Borough
The 311 logs give each borough a signature. Residential noise is the most-filed complaint type in the Bronx, and the borough files more of it than any other in the city. Queens leads with illegal parking, then blocked driveways, which is what a log looks like in a borough where people have driveways.
The corridor check keeps both honest. Roosevelt Avenue and Queens Boulevard, the two roads Queens gets judged by, both land in the middle of the table, and Arthur Avenue in the Bronx sits a handful of points below them. Big-road living plays out much the same on either side of the Whitestone.
Thin Benches on Both Sides
Neither borough has much of a top tier. Between them, Queens and the Bronx account for fewer than two dozen of the A-graded streets in the city, across two grids that hold more than a third of its scored blocks.
With the averages level, the borough question mostly dissolves into the block question. Put your two candidate streets side by side and let the columns argue.