Best Queens Neighborhoods for Young Professionals

Astoria is one name covering four ZIP codes, and on transit access they are not the same neighborhood.

11106, the Broadway and 36th Avenue end nearest the bridge, averages 61 on transit access. 11103 averages 55. Then it falls off: 11102 averages 40 and 11105, the Ditmars end, averages 36, which is what Staten Island posts across its entire borough.

The listings do not distinguish. All four say Astoria, all four quote the N and W, and the two ends of the neighborhood sit at 61 and 36 on transit access.

What you get for the longer walk is not quiet. On that score 11106, 11103 and 11105 post the same figure, 56, 57 and 57, and 11102 averages 47. It is the roads: 11105 averages 65 on traffic safety against 53 at the Broadway end, because the streets out there carry less through-traffic. 27th Street in 11105 grades 75, scoring 85 on quiet and 87 on traffic safety. Newtown Avenue in 11102 grades 76 and scores 93 on food access.

Check the ZIP code on the listing, then time the walk to the platform yourself, because all four of these ZIP codes are advertised under the one neighborhood name.

Long Island City grades best of the five and does it on access rather than calm. 11101 averages 62 overall on transit access of 65 and food access of 77. Hunter Street grades 85 with a traffic-safety score of 99. The top of the Long Island City rankings needs a caution. Queens Street and Orchard Street, the two blocks holding it, are managed towers in Long Island City rather than ordinary streets, and they score the way a doorman and an internal complaint line score. Our best streets in Queens guide carries their building and home counts.

Astoria carries its food access at the Steinway end, where 11103 averages 85 against 54 out at Ditmars, and it is the neighborhood where the specific street decides everything. Steinway Street scores 36 on quiet with food access at 90; 30th Avenue scores 46. 28th Street, a short walk from both, scores 92 on quiet and grades 79. The one to avoid without checking is 21st Street, which scores 3 on traffic safety and 5 on cleanliness.

Sunnyside is small and mixed. 11104 averages 54 overall with transit access at 58, and its weakness is the roads: the ZIP code averages 40 on traffic safety. 40th Street grades 68 with a traffic-safety score of 94 and a housing score of 20. Housing is built from HPD violation records per home, and it is the number to read in an older building.

Woodside grades lowest of the five on average and holds one of the strongest individual blocks on this page. In our 311 records 11377 averages 55 on quiet, and 52nd Street grades 78 with quiet at 86, traffic safety at 97 and cleanliness at 88.

Forest Hills earns half of its reputation. On the 311 complaint record 11375 averages 63 on quiet, comfortably above the borough, and it averages 46 on traffic safety, comfortably below the citywide 50. 71st Road grades 77 with quiet at 94. Queens Boulevard runs through it at 36 on traffic safety, and 108th Street at 19. The residential streets are as calm as the reputation says. The through-roads are not.

Three checks, in this order, and they take about a minute each.

First, run the exact block rather than the neighborhood. Every graded Queens street comes back with nine scores.

Second, read traffic safety before quiet. This is the reverse of the advice for Manhattan or Brooklyn, and it is because Queens averages 43 on that score, last in the city. If the block is on or beside a through-road it will show up here, and no lease term changes it. The score is a percentile against streets of the same type, so below 50 the block is in the more dangerous half of its own band, and that is the point to go and walk the crossing yourself at the hour you would actually be crossing it.

Third, check the walk, not the neighborhood. The transit score is built from MTA stop locations, so a block two avenues from the platform reads lower than one beside it even when the listing quotes the same train. In Astoria that difference is the whole spread between 11106 and 11105.

One more thing worth doing before you sign, and it costs nothing: put your two finalists into the compare tool side by side. In Astoria the two finalists are often a few blocks apart and tens of points apart on quiet, as Steinway Street at 36 and 28th Street at 92 are.