What "Up and Coming" Looks Like in the Data
the range from best to worst graded block inside Long Island City's 11101, the highest-averaging ZIP code in Queens
Bestage street grades, updated weekly
The names on the up-and-coming list barely change from year to year: Long Island City, Ridgewood and Jamaica in Queens, Bushwick and Sunset Park in Brooklyn, Mott Haven in the Bronx, Washington Heights in Manhattan, Stapleton on the Staten Island North Shore. Those eight are our pick from the perennial list, and their ZIP-code averages run from 62 in Long Island City down to 37 in South Jamaica, against a citywide 51.
Then the averages stop being useful. In six of the eight the distance between the best-graded block and the worst runs past 50 points, and in Jamaica and Mott Haven past 60. Sunset Park is the tightest and still runs 36 points. Read one ZIP code at a time and the spread is wider than in the typical New York ZIP code with ten or more graded streets.
This page does not tell you which way a neighborhood is heading. Our grades are recomputed weekly and the history behind the current model runs to weeks, so no page on this site publishes a score trend for a street. Complaint volume is a separate thing and we do hold it: monthly 311 counts back to 2010 for every street we score, which is a record of what has already happened and not a forecast. What follows is the grade as it stands today, block by block, which is the number you actually sign for.
Note: Long Island City holds the highest-graded street in Queens at 97 and a block grading 37, both inside 11101. Read the block before you read the neighborhood.
The Watch List, Graded
Each row below is one ZIP code, so the map reproduces it. Every figure is a 0-100 average over the graded streets in that ZIP code.
The bottom of the table is the bottom on transit access and on the overall grade at once. Ridgewood, Stapleton and the two Jamaica ZIP codes all sit at 56 or below on transit access and under the citywide street average overall, and nothing in the friction columns rescues them.
The top is more mixed than the transit column suggests. Washington Heights has the strongest transit average here and the weakest quiet average. Eastern Bushwick sits near the top of the table on transit access and grades under the citywide average anyway, on cleanliness in the twenties. Long Island City posts the best overall grade of the ten ZIP codes in the table with only the fifth-best transit average, because it is the one place on this list that also holds up on the block itself: the strongest cleanliness average in the table and one of the strongest on quiet. So the blocks worth naming are the ones that beat their own ZIP code on the column it is failing.
| Neighborhood (ZIP) | Streets | Overall | Transit | Quiet | Clean |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Long Island City (11101) | 33 | 62 | 65 | 63 | 59 |
| Sunset Park (11220) | 27 | 59 | 63 | 65 | 40 |
| Washington Heights (10033) | 25 | 54 | 89 | 21 | 41 |
| Bushwick, west (11206) | 56 | 52 | 82 | 33 | 35 |
| Mott Haven (10455) | 23 | 49 | 77 | 25 | 46 |
| Bushwick, east (11237) | 20 | 49 | 77 | 23 | 27 |
| Ridgewood (11385) | 80 | 51 | 56 | 50 | 47 |
| Stapleton (10304) | 124 | 48 | 53 | 53 | 47 |
| Jamaica Estates and Hillcrest (11432) | 47 | 46 | 50 | 48 | 49 |
| South Jamaica (11434) | 66 | 37 | 20 | 44 | 51 |
Navy Pier Court grades 84, the highest on Staten Island. Hillside Avenue, in the same Stapleton ZIP code, grades 23.
The Blocks That Already Grade Well
Every neighborhood above holds blocks that would grade well anywhere in the city. Those are the addresses worth naming, because a lease is signed on one street.
Queens Street and Orchard Street in Long Island City grade 97 and 96, and both are single developments rather than blocks. Hunter Street, a short walk away and 10 buildings, grades 85.
Navy Pier Court in Stapleton grades 84 on a traffic-safety score of 97 and a cleanliness score of 96. It is 2 buildings holding 571 homes, and Staten Island grades only 5 streets at 79 or better.
Highland Avenue in Jamaica Estates grades 83, the strongest ordinary residential street in Queens, inside the Jamaica ZIP codes, which post the weakest averages on this page.
Bergen Avenue in Mott Haven, a single development of 5 buildings holding 829 homes, grades 76, among the highest in the Bronx, with transit access at 93 and food access at 91. Lincoln Avenue, 6 buildings holding 2,050 homes, grades 79 on a quiet score of 91.
Montieth Street grades 82 and Montrose Avenue 79 in 11206, on the line between Bushwick and East Williamsburg, and Montrose Avenue is the one of the two that is a real block, 99 buildings against Montieth Street's 2. Deeper into the neighborhood the ceiling comes down: the best blocks in 11237 are St Nicholas Avenue at 70 and Ridgewood Place at 70.
Catalpa Avenue in Ridgewood grades 81, and Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens grades 77 with a quiet score of 95, which is not what a shopping strip under an elevated line is supposed to post. Bennett Avenue in Washington Heights grades 77 on a traffic-safety score of 96. In Sunset Park, 55th Street and 57th Street both grade 69, with quiet scores of 94 and 94.
Where the Same Neighborhoods Give Way
The reason to read a block instead of a neighborhood on this list is that the weak blocks are weak in a specific way, and it is almost always one column doing the damage.
In Bushwick it is sanitation. Its two ZIP codes average 27 and 35 on cleanliness against 77 and 82 on transit access, and the split shows up inside single addresses. Graham Avenue grades 71 overall on a cleanliness score of 1. Morgan Avenue is the floor of the neighborhood at 29, with cleanliness at 1 and a traffic-safety score of 0.
In Jamaica it is traffic. South Jamaica's 11434 averages 29 on our crash-based safety score, the weakest of the eight, and the numbered streets carry most of it: 122nd Avenue grades 17, with quiet, cleanliness and safety all in single digits.
In Mott Haven it is the buildings. Its 10455 averages 21 on housing, which counts HPD violations against the homes on the street, against 77 on transit access. One ZIP code over, both columns hit the floor at once. East 132nd Street in 10454 grades 19 with housing at 0 and cleanliness at 1.
In Washington Heights it is noise, and it runs through the whole neighborhood instead of a few bad blocks. Its 10033 posts a transit average of 89 and a quiet average of 21, the weakest of the eight. People move there for the trains, and the complaint record is what comes with them.
In Stapleton it is what is not within walking distance. Food access in 10304 averages 31 and the tree count 39, both the lowest of the eight, and the same ZIP code contains the two best-known estate roads on the island: Benedict Road grades 24 and Todt Hill Road 32.
Long Island City, Sunset Park and Ridgewood do not share a weak column. Long Island City's weak spot is parking, at 38, and it still runs from Queens Street at 97 down to Borden Avenue at 37, which scores 1 on traffic safety. Sunset Park gives back sanitation, averaging 40 in 11220, and 24th Street grades 39 on a cleanliness score of 10. Ridgewood gives back curb space at 26, the lowest of the eight, and 80th Avenue grades 30 on a parking score of 1.
In all eight, the neighborhood name narrows the search and the block decides it. Below 30 overall, the block is failing on more than one column at once, and the street page is where you find out which.
Important: None of these grades is a forecast. Every one of them is what the block recorded in the last complaint and crash cycle, and a neighborhood on every up-and-coming list still holds blocks grading in the teens.